<p>My d's high school does not rank. They give weighted and unweighted GPAs and provide each school with a bar graph that shows how many kids scored in certain ranges. </p>
<p>My d has a 3.96 UW and a 4.1 W. Almost all Honors and APs. Good to very good ECs. </p>
<p>However, as we tried to figure out where she is in her class rank based on this bar graph, she looks to be in about the top 15%. She couldn't figure out who all of the 40 kids were in the 4.2 to 4.5 UW section of the bar graph, but they were there. </p>
<p>Out of about 450 kids, we think she is probably 55-60, somewhere in there. </p>
<p>She's really upset she's not in the top 10% and is worried that her schools will be more concerned with her rank than with her GPA, test scores (2130 SAT, 32 ACT). I'm trying to reassure her that it won't mean that much, but I'm not even really sure about that...</p>
<p>Anyone know? </p>
<p>She's not interested in HYPS - her reaches are Northwestern and Cornell; targets are W&M, NYU, BU, BC; safety is UConn (which she likes very much).</p>
<p>My school doesn’t rank, weight, or provide us with a bar chart to give any idea of how we rank either. Since your school doesn’t rank, don’t provide the rank. How does someone achieve a 4.5 UW? Do they give a 4.33 for an A+, and then something else for some A++ grade? A 3.96 UW indicates mostly As and a few A-s. I can’t imagine how her GPA would be holding her back. I don’t think the rank will be a problem, as there’s not much better she could possibly have done, juse a couple of As instead of A-s.</p>
<p>Schools try to translate whatever the ranking system (chart, graph, list, percentile) is into their normal system. If they can gather her percentile from the information they give, then it might be worrisome. If you D’s high school is THAT competitive, then I would probably think it’s safe to say that they’ll accommodate that. They know how competitive each school is, and they can adjust accordingly.</p>
<p>School not ranking is NOT a concern at all. I have asked this question on Info session for Honors program with requirement to be top 2%. The answer was that college admission office calculates it anyway based on a kid GPA and class profile. The funny part was that D. who graduated #1 in her class (the only one with 4.0uw), did not make 2%, because of having only 33 kids in her HS class. She got in anyway.</p>
<p>There is no Valedictorian status at school either. Nothing, except parents awards at graduation for highest overall and highest senior GPA. We had no idea before graduation that D would get both.</p>
<p>The bottom line is that at most private colleges, rank is a very important, if not the most important factor. Not being in the top 10% will make Cornell and NU very difficult for an unhooked student unless her HS is super competitive (sends 25% to ivies, average SAT score near 2100). Less than 10% of those accepted at these schools are not in the top 10% and that includes all of the athletes, URMs and legacies.</p>
<p>It will also unfortunately make aid hard at the others that don’t meet need for all.</p>
<p>“How does someone achieve a 4.5 UW? Do they give a 4.33 for an A+, and then something else for some A++ grade? A 3.96 UW indicates mostly As and a few A-s”</p>
<p>You get a 4.0 for an A, but Honors classes are given an extra .5 and APs get an extra 1.0, so if you get an A+ in an AP class, it’s weighted 5.5.</p>
<p>“Is some sort of information released regarding her range, or is it just an arbitrary bar graph?”</p>
<p>The vertical axis is how many kids fall in the range and the horizontal axis is the ranges like greater than 4.75, 4.5 to 4.75, 4.25 to 4.5 etc…</p>
<p>In the case of Cornell, this is true for Arts and Sciences and Engineering, but not necessarily for some of the specialty schools and programs. If your daughter can demonstrate a compelling interest in the hospitality field, for example (as demonstrated by jobs or internships in that field that have produced excellent recommendations from her supervisors), she would have a good chance at the School of Hotel Administration despite not being in the top 10 percent.</p>
<p>My D attends a school that does an unweighted GPA and an unweighted rank. As a result, it is possible, by getting a single to B, to take all honors and AP courses yet be ranked lower than someone who took no honors or AP courses at all.</p>
<p>Do any of you know how colleges deal with this situation?</p>
<p>2girls4me, that is very much her situation. There may be kids who had straight A+s in college prep, the lowest level, who are ahead of her, even though she took a more rigorous schedule. For instance, she took both AP English and AP US History last year and received As in both, but is still ranked where she is. </p>
<p>At less competitive schools, it can matter a lot for merit aid. Some schools have charts - if your SAT is 2100 and you are in the top 20%, you get $X. With an SAT of 2100 in the top 10% you get $x+5000 and with an SAT of 2100 in the top 5% you get $X+$10000. Some schools only invite the top 5% to compete for the “big” scholarship. Some schools have hard and fast rules on honors college admission…top 10% only and not top 10.1%.</p>
<p>Schools recompute GPAs in all sorts of ways…no weighting, weighting, counting only “core” classes…but I fear that calss rank has to remain static, because the college can’t know what everyone else took.</p>
<p>4gsmom, ds is in much the same boat, only he’s much farther down the ladder (wow, is that a mixed metaphor or what?).</p>
<p>He made the decision to attend this highly competitive HS, where some kids take the easier class that still carries the same weight and so move on up ahead of the kids who are truly challenging themselves. I think there are four things that can be done:</p>
<p>1) Mope quietly.
2) Decry loudly the inhumanity of it all.
3) Accept the fact that this is the route you chose and are better for it, in terms of academic preparation for college-level work.
4) Work with counselor and admin to make sure the HS profile does a good job of explaining how the school is set up and why some high-achieving kids might be ranked lower than others not taking the most rigorous courseload.</p>
<p>4gsmom: I think it must depend a lot on the school. Just looking at the Williams common data set, they weight rank as less important than academic rigor and GPA. Also, only 31% of the 2008 freshman class even submitted a class rank. Amherst also puts rank as less important than GPA and rigor and 50% submitted a class rank. I have to assume that adcoms don’t look at rank in a vacuum, but weigh it along with GPA, rigor and SAT scores, and are able to distinguish things like highly ranked kids who look lightweight courseloads.</p>