<p>Ok, my application is competitive/high in every aspect - SATs, SAT II’s, Grades, Extracurriculars, Recommendations, Essays, etc. </p>
<p>One problem - low unweighted class rank, due to two reasons.</p>
<li>In my freshman year I was ok but not excellent (3.7 GPA, 92%) due to family deaths. Severe upward trend w/ 11 AP’s by graduation. 94% GPA by Junior Year. </li>
<li>In my school, few people take AP’s, causing unweighted class rank to be vastly scewed.</li>
</ol>
<p>In short, considering every other part of my application is competitive, will a low class rank (between top 5% and top 10%) hurt my chances/ destroy them at top schools such as Wharton, Stern, Harvard, Yale, etc.? I saw UPenn’s admission statistics for people below the top 5%, such as me, was 6%, which made me quite unhappy. </p>
<p>In short, is this just one red flag (since based on what I’ve heard, for top ivies/schools, two red flags is rejection, one is ok), or a total asteroid on my application? Reflecting on it right now I’m feeling pretty depressed about it</p>
<p>1.) What IS your class rank?
2.) How many people are in your class?</p>
<p>If you go to a public school, you might be screwed for the "elite colleges" because those very few that do in fact make it outside of the top 10% of their high school classes are usually from elite prep schools.</p>
<p>My school hasn't released my rank yet, but my class is a public competitive (suburban) school w/ a class of 500 that sends about 10 people to ivies every year, with about 20 having been accepted to ivies. 70% go to 4 year colleges.</p>
<p>Based on my counselers prediction, she said I'm likely hovering at prob. about 30-40 out of 500.</p>
<p>Honestly in my application it's such an anamoly. No one would expect it, as everyone else who looked at my application generally and saw my stats besides that expected that I was in the top 1% of my class or such (I prob. would be if there were weighted rank). Every other part of the app is unique, competitive, and high, except for one bad apple, which actually isn't 'awful awful', but it still hurts a lot</p>
<p>Oh I read your post wrong. I thought you said that you were outside of the top 10%. While what I said before about how people with a lower class rank who are accepted tend to be private school preps still holds true, I now think you have a much better shot. If all other aspects of your application are strong, you definitely have a chance at the schools you mentioned. Don't count yourself out.</p>
<p>However as a disclaimer, I do not know the statistics for the ivys outside of the top 10%. I didn't even know colleges release information to the top 5% so if the 90+% for ivys still holds through to the top 5%, this post was made without that information.</p>
<p>"In short, is this just one red flag (since based on what I've heard, for top ivies/schools, two red flags is rejection, one is ok), or a total asteroid on my application? Reflecting on it right now I'm feeling pretty depressed about it"</p>
<p>what would be an example of another "red flag"?</p>
<p>Ah, alright thanks : ) with application deadlines just months away my gut is getting rumbly / nervous about this thing</p>
<p>@ oranges92; another red flag would be like having low test scores, weak ecs, bad essay or recs, or something like that I believe</p>
<p>Class rank is traditionally not a killer for Stanford, Caltech or MIT.
When class rank <em>formally</em> exists it will have a definite impact for
H and P.</p>
<p>I thought that schools cut you a break if the ranking is unweighted... I think the expectation of top five percent is for weighted. Unweighted ranking is stoooooopid (yes, I tried that). Or at least that's what I've heard around here before.</p>
<p>Since personal experience is all I have, I'll give you numbers and let you decide. SAT: 740CR, 800M, 740W; ACT: 34Comp, SAT Sub II: 740 Math IIC, 750 Chem, 790 U.S. History. I had plenty of EC involvement... was an Eagle Scout, Teen Court volunteer attorney, President of Debate, Young Republicans, Spanish Club, and made the Texas All-State choir. I was pretty close with teacher recs and although I wasn't a great writer I think my essays were decent. However, I was ranked 32/491 in my class as a result of getting some low A's, a C (I HATE chem...), and staying in two unweighted EC classes all four years.</p>
<p>I applied to every Ivy (except Cornell) and was accepted at Dartmouth, waitlisted by UPenn, and rejected by the rest. I also was waitlisted by Duke & Amherst and was rejected by Stanford, Williams, Georgetown and also accepted at Pomona, Rice, UT-Austin & UChicago. Feel free to message me if you have any other questions!</p>
<p>Your counselor will send a HS profile and the colleges will look at your rank in context. The fact that rank is based on unweighted GPA and you're taking the toughest courseload possible (I think?) should explain your case better and it shouldn't necessarily hurt you as much as you think it may. BUT, the thing is, there are places like my school where the top 10 honestly wouldn't be all that different if we ranked by weighted or unweighted GPA even with all the AP classes the top kids take. So the point is even if your UW GPA might've been slightly pummeled by APs there are kids who get good grades even UW in classes of equal rigor. </p>
<p>So basically, it won't hurt you necessarily, but you're not going to be a top applicant unless your ECs are super incredible. But no it's not really a red flag either lol.</p>
<p>Thanks for your advice - yep I'm taking the hardest courseload possible, but about the grades, I have a A average with all my AP classes - A's in every AP class I took. The only thing is, other people who took easy classes get A's too, and there are a lot of those. Out of a class of 500 prob. only 20-30 take AP's, and of those only about 15 or so get A-range averages, while the rest, as my counseler told me, are people who just take regular college-prep courses and get perfect grades in them. (We are based on a scale out of 100%)</p>
<p>Well, not to be arrogant but I have some EC's that I've given a lot of passion to (SGA President, national chair of a organization, some other stuff) so hopefully that compensates.</p>
<p>I'm going to have to spend the next few months working my butt off on my essays though lol...borderline case like me : (</p>
<p>I don't think rank is all that important in your case. Your GPA and academic history seem to be very strong. and even being #40 out of 500 puts you in the top 8% of your class. Colleges use rank to gauge how well you are doing in comparison to the rest of your classmates, and you are doing better than 92% of your classmates. That's excellent! Also, when your counselor sends their report the college will be aware that you are being compared on an unweighted basis to other students.</p>
<p>I think that you have nothing to worry about, and you are certainly not a borderline case because you're in the top 10% instead of the top 5% or top 1%.</p>