<p>I am currently a Junior. Since the third quarter of my sophmore year (at which point I had an eppiphany that I needed to go “all out” at school) I have been earning very good grades.
Prior to then my grades were poor, around the mid 80’s, and my class rank for Freshman year was 58 out of 169. My average for the first quarter of this year was 97 and I fully intended to maintain that for the rest of my High School career. A clear upward trend in my grades will be evident, however, at best I can only hope my class rank will be around 30th of 169 by the time I apply.
On a more hopeful note, I just got my PSAT score back, on which I scored 700 in CR, 680 in math and 640 in writing. My SI was 202 and I placed at the 97th percentile. I expect to get at least 50 points higher on the real SAT, and have already taken a subject test in World History and scored 780.</p>
<p>Overall, my test scores will be well within the 25-75 percentile rage of Brown and several other Ivy’s. My class rank however, will not. Unfortuantly, class rank is the criteria colleges place the most weight on. Can any body tell me if colleges value the overall trend of an applicant’s high school years as opposed to the rank alone? Is Brown more likely to hold my poor and unmotivated performance during my Freshman and sophmore years against me when I show so much effort and capacity for achievemant in my Junior and Senior years, or will they place greater value on the actual work I have done since I became motivated, as displayed in my grades for this year so far?</p>
<p>Thank you to all who comment.</p>
<p>Also on another note, does any on know if the 97th percentile is sufficient for qualification in the NMSQT?</p>