How important is class rank to top tier colleges

<p>I have a really bad class rank, mainly because my class is really small. There are 81 students in my class, and I'm ranked 14. His is bc my school is really weird and had allowed selected students in 9th grade to take a bunch of ap classes. So in total the top students have taken 20+ ap classes!!! My gpa is 3.92 and Im taking 17 ap total. </p>

<p>Also is it to my advantage that my school is one of the top schools in the nation?? We're usually ranked in top 10 public schools in US.</p>

<p>Since they separated everyone to different "levels" or tracks in 9th grade, it is so unfair that they are ranking people. To add, I'm not in the top track</p>

<p>Why is it unfair if the top performers are top ranked? </p>

<p>I was worried about a similar thing.</p>

<p>I was told that class rank isn’t really important anymore. They more look at your GPA in context of other historical applicants from your school. This may sound like at class rank, but it’s more holistic instead of throwing an app in the trash because “you aren’t in top 5% or top 10%”. So many schools don’t even rank anymore. </p>

<p>They will also look at the rigor of your high school. If they know your HS is difficult, class rank will be disregarded more because the differences in “intellectual capability” are so slim between #1 and #15, or even #50 or whatever. Plus in small class sizes, the top 10% is often only like the first dozen kids.</p>