<p>It stands to reason that class rank matters if the college respects the way the school calculates class rank, and doesn’t matter at all if not. If a high school offers multiple tracks of courses, and does not weight grades for purposes of class rank, then certainly the most selective colleges (including Northwestern and Cornell) are simply going to ignore class rank. They wouldn’t even consider admitting the students who take less challenging courses and get all As, so why would they penalize a qualifying applicant who was slightly lower ranked on an unweighted basis, or advantage an identical applicant lucky enough to have chosed a high school with weighted rankings?</p>
<p>I’m not talking here about formulas for merit aid, or numbers-based admissions algorithms at public colleges, or the Texas 10% rule. With those things, you may just have to live with the class rank you are given. I note, however, that lots of elite private secondary schools refuse to rank, and they seem to do pretty well. At schools where lots of top candidates apply to the same colleges, the colleges can probably get a pretty good idea of classs rank all by themselves.</p>
<p>NB: The OP’s post doesn’t make any sense at all. Her daughter has a 3.9 unweighted GPA, 4.1 weighted, “almost all APs and honors”, and APs and honors get a 1.0-0.5 boost? Under her facts, her daughter couldn’t have taken more than a third of her courses as honors or AP, and probably not more than 1 or 2 APs max. And is there really a substantial population of students taking non-honors courses and getting nothing but A+s?</p>
<p>You also have to factor in whether your hs is known to the adcoms. If your hs is known as a hard school with lots of overachievers, then the adcoms are willing to go deeper into the class for acceptances. If you go to a pretty middling school, then you may need to be in the top 1% of your class to attract attention.</p>
<p>There must be very little weight given to AP and honors classes at your school if someone with a 3.96 unweighted who has taken all AP and honors only got a 1.04 boost. Can you check the math? </p>
<p>Another thing to note: adcoms are not dumb. They look at classes taken–AP classes vs. regular classes. </p>
<p>Look at this scatterplot for Boston University–unweighted GPA plotted on one side and SAT scores on the other side. Someone with a 3.96 unweighted gpa and >2100 SAT scores should fair pretty well.</p>
<p>I just had a thought. Is it clear that the bar graph represents the actual current GPAs of this year’s class, or something like the average GPA distribution for the last five graduating classes? If it’s the latter, that may solve your dilemma. Since students tend to take most of their APs in 11th and 12th grades, weighted GPAs at the top of the class will increase significantly from 11th grade to graduation. A 4.1 at the end of 11th grade, for a student taking the most challenging curriculum, may well project to a 4.2+ at graduation.</p>
<p>At my kids’ school, they used a 100-point scale, and ranked based on weighted GPA, with college prep courses getting a 10% boost, honors 15%, and APs 20%. Honors and AP classes were essentially not offered to 9th graders. Based on the courses available, the maximum achievable GPA went up more than a point from 11th grade to graduation, and as a practical matter most of the top students – who could take as many as four APs as seniors, and no more than two any other year – increased their GPAs by more than a point (on, effectively, a 115-point scale).</p>
<p>Class rank can be very important at many colleges, for admissions as well as for criteria for merit aid. Often the guidance counselor can complete a form letter stating the student would have been in the top decile, etc. if ranked…perhaps ask your counselor to compose one for your application for admissions or merit/academic scholarships.</p>
<p>“The OP’s post doesn’t make any sense at all. Her daughter has a 3.9 unweighted GPA, 4.1 weighted, “almost all APs and honors”, and APs and honors get a 1.0-0.5 boost? Under her facts, her daughter couldn’t have taken more than a third of her courses as honors or AP, and probably not more than 1 or 2 APs max. And is there really a substantial population of students taking non-honors courses and getting nothing but A+s?”</p>
<p>She had some classes that aren’t offered as Honors or AP - her language is Latin and it’s not offered as Honors or AP. Additionally, she’s had PE and Health and her electives - none get the extra boost. </p>
<p>Trust me, we were as surprised by the ranking as anyone else was. It just didn’t make sense. We sat down with a calculator and it worked out…we were really hoping their math was off. </p>
<p>It’s a very, very competitive public high school. Many bright kids; every year they send a good number off to the Ivies.</p>
<p>My daughter’s school also didn’t rank. She had over 4.0 UW. She applied to Rutgers, and we just assumed she would get into their honors program. We waited, and waited, nothing about honors. I finally called them to ask, “What’s up with that?” They told me that their computer program automatically selected all students in the top 10%, since our daughter’s school didn’t rank, she was not selected. Her GC had to submit a letter to give an approximate percentile.</p>
<p>If your kid is applying to any school that looks at ranking for special programs or merit scholarship, make sure the transcript shows approximate percentile.</p>
<p>The Common App Secondary School Report to be filled out by the GCs ask the GCs to list quartile, quintile or decile of applicant if the school does not rank.</p>
<p>I believe our daughter’s school sends out its own report. They send out the same packet to every school, they don’t use any school’s special forms.</p>
<p>This is what I don’t understand – everyone talks about how the top colleges are into diversity at all levels (whether it’s racial, socioeconomic, blah blah blah). Yet somehow it matters if the high school is “known” to them or “not known” to them. Isn’t that just a version of the old boys’ club? Wouldn’t they want to seek out a student from an otherwise unknown high school the same way they want to seek out students from Montana or students who enjoy fly-fishing or students who speak fluent Swedish?</p>
<p>The whole concept that a student is somehow “responsible” for the high school that he or she attends bugs me, though I can’t articulate why.</p>
<p>That’s possible at our school. Our school counts the A in an AP or honors class as a 5.0 (etc) but you still have to take physical education all 4 years (mandated by our state) and you still have to take classes such as consumer education that can’t be honors. Students in band and chorus have the same issue.</p>
<p>How is an A+ 4.33? I really don’t understand, as grading for my school has always been deflated. I can understand getting a 103% in a class (but really? if you’re getting that, the class is too easy) because of extra credit, but still…doesn’t it end up reflecting badly on the student? </p>
<p>I’ve always been accustomed to classes where the teacher puts caps on the number of kids allowed to get an A, makes it (literally) impossible to get over 95%, but still gives out extra credit. Weighting is pretty much pointless, as my school puts .025 per semester for a weighted class, and then averages it again. At the most, by the time you graduate, you can have something like a 4.2. At the most. So It really doesn’t make sense to me why a school would give a 4.33 for 97% and above.</p>
<p>Maybe we could stop questioning the OP and the stats, which are real. My child attends the same school and I’ve posted another thread on this issue.</p>
<p>axlexandra - each school has it’s own grading system. My daughter’s private high school didn’t even calculate GPA, they just gave out grades. Just FYI - based on the profile they sent out to colleges, very few students got A+. You have to be outstanding to get an A+, and it does not reflect badly on the student. When I say my daughter had 4.1 UW, it is assuming we use conventional GPA calculation. My daughter had quite a few A+ in some of her major subject classes (many of them APs and Honors), only one B+ in high school.</p>
<p>She is currently at Cornell. The college calculates GPA based on B=3.0, B+=3.33, A-=3.66, A=4.0, and A+=4.33. No one can say there is inflation at Cornell or it’s easy.</p>
<p>No, I understand that. I meant with schools that DO give out GPA and inflate their scores by a huge margin, doesn’t that reflect badly on the students? Where there is blatant inflation present?</p>
<p>A 4.1 or a 4.5 make sense to me; your daughter’s school clearly didn’t inflate.</p>
<p>And my kids’ school only calculates A=4.0, B=3.0, etc. (and A=5.0, B=4.0 if in an AP or Honors class). No pluses or minuses. </p>
<p>Some schools, such as ours, count all classes, including gym. Other schools include only academic subjects and exclude the arts, music, shop, etc. </p>
<p>The very fact that schools have to recalculate all these seems like a colossal use of resources, esp for elite schools getting 20,000+ applications. The grades aren’t provided electronically, so someone would have to take each record, peel away whether each class is honors or AP or whatever, and enter it manually into some calculating database. I have to confess I’m not convinced that they <em>really</em> do it. I suspect they just have a look-see to make sure it’s generally in line with what they believe is necessary for academic success, and that they really don’t sweat that Susie’s school gives B+ grades and Mary’s school gives just A’s and B’s, or that Joey’s state requires phys ed all four years whereas Bobby’s state requires it for just two years, or that Kathy’s school offers AP Art whereas Vicki’s school offers just regular art.</p>
![http://www.arcadiachineseparents.org/plots/2008/BU.png[/url]](http://www.arcadiachineseparents.org/plots/2008/BU.png%5B/url%5D){kind=link}
