How much does class rank matter for Ivies and Top 20 schools?

Applying to College
21

Thanks again for all the information. I have an UW GPA of 4.0 and weighted is 4.6 and I am still only in top 15% despite never having had a B in any class.
I should have taken more AP classes in junior year. I have one more semester in the Fall and hope I can increase my class rank to top 10%

22

There is actually a whole other active thread about APs you might want to check out.

Long story short–I think it is true the most selective colleges like to see their applicants take a lot of the most rigorous courses at their high schools, and if those courses are AP courses at your HS, in that sense those might be the sorts of courses they are looking for.

But personally, I would not get too caught up in exactly how your school then processes that into a class rank. Indeed, I think the more selective the college, the less weight it is likely to put on that sort of calculation, and the more it will just do its own independent evaluation of your transcript. Even if it says it considers your class rank or views it as important, I think that still usually means they think it is important in context, not just because of the raw number.

And according to AOs, some amount of focus is not necessarily bad. Like, if you are a STEM student and do not max out all the humanities tracks in order to be able to take more STEM electives, this will not necessarily look bad in holistic admissions, even if given the way your school ranks that hurt your ranking a bit.

So I am definitely not trying to discourage you from thinking about having an impressive transcript. I just don’t think you should be too focused on class rank itself.

1 Like
23

I don’t think this is true. STEM kids should show serious humanities strength and interest in order to be considered seriously for the top schools, especially the top privates. This may not be by maxing the number of humanities courses, but someone at your HS should be able to attest to your passion in some aspect of humanities.

2 Likes
24

I know a student in this same situation and wonder how AOs evaluate this. Does the AO assume grade inflation? What if the student also has high test scores (at 75th percentile for this top college), is this all overthinking - does the AO say, ok this person is academically qualified, and then move on to non-academic portions of the app, or is the wGPA ranking issue a blight on the academic qualifications even with a 4.0 uw ? Is the rigor truly not sufficient because “more” was available as indicated by wGPA ranking?

25

Well right, what I said is if you are a STEM applicant and do not max out ALL the humanities tracks, that is not necessarily bad. But if you do not take ANY advanced courses which focus on reading and writing, then THAT might be bad (for the most selective colleges, at least). There is a big gap between those propositions.

And pretty consistently, what I have heard from AOs about STEM applicants is while they do want to see some evidence of advanced reading and writing ability, they also want to see a lot of diversity among the sciences in their STEM applicants. So, like, even if you don’t want to study Biology, they still ideally want to see you take challenging Biology courses, possibly advanced/honors Biology courses.

OK, so hypothetically suppose you are on track to take AP English or the equivalent, and to have a reasonably high reading/writing score on your standardized tests. As a STEM student, do you ALSO need to take AP History? AP in some language?

I think it depends on context, but you might well be better off taking a challenging science class instead, even if it doesn’t get you an AP credit. Like, some high schools offer various advanced science electives instead of, or in addition to, AP science courses. It is not at all necessarily the case that a STEM applicant like the above is better off taking AP History rather than, say, an advanced Inorganic Chemistry elective.

OK, so again no advanced reading/writing classes at all might be bad for a STEM applicant. But once you have SOME of that, adding more of that because it gets you another AP is not necessarily a better idea than diversifying or deepening your STEM courses.

And the bottom line is trying to turn any of this into mathematically precise rules is likely a mistake. But that is essentially what class rank does. And that is probably why to my knowledge no schools like this ever rate rigor lower than their top academic rating (whatever that is), but at least some do rate class rank lower.

And in fact, as noted CalTech rated class rank lower. MIT does too–all of the other academic criteria are rated Important by MIT, but class rank specifically is downgraded to Considered. Georgia Tech is very interesting–rigor and GPA are Very Important, essays Important, standardized tests and recommendations Considered, and Class rank is their only academic factor Not Considered.

I am not saying this is necessarily a universal view among “tech” schools. But I don’t think it is coincidence all three of these schools are among the schools that downgrade class rank. They know STEM-focused kids may not always be able to play the class rank games necessary at some high schools. But they are willing to look past that–if you otherwise show you took a rigorous course schedule and did really well.

26

I’m not sure I have ever seen a former or current admissions officer for a highly-selective college suggest they would want to mechanically apply the school’s internal “weighted GPA” formula to such an applicant.

Their challenge, if they get a lot of applications and they plan to do an initial academic screen, is getting the sorts of information you just described, such that they can properly evaluate this applicant during that screening process. But the school/counselor is supposedly to be giving them the necessary information to do that.

And I think they would likely nearly universally reject the idea that they would ever want to treat a weighted GPA/class rank as an unavoidable “blight” when they had such an explanation available.

1 Like
27

Given the HIGH number of AP Classes you already took, and the more you currently have scheduled, and never having had a grade below A, 4.0 u/w GPA, and an ACT of 35 - the “15%” figure is meaningless in the context of your high school.

There is nothing you need to “chase” to improve your stats. Your application and those of other high-achieving students like yourself, will be looked for the totality of the application, not some decimal point differences – because at that level, every applicant will be equally suited to (continued) academic success at their college.

8 Likes
28

Thank you for your comments.

29

This captures my beef with the rank consideration, that it implies a standardization that does not exist. It’s one thing for AOs to say they use rank to consider how an applicant compares to classmates, but a true comparison cannot actually be made because the college is not looking at the transcripts of the classmates (with the possible exception of the few who happen to apply to the same top school).

1 Like
30

Thanks. Yes, I am a STEM student.
I took or am taking
AP Chem, AP Physics 1, AP Physics 2, AP Principles of Engineering, AP Engineering design, AP Aerospace Engineering, AP Calculus, AP Statistics, AP Environmental Science and AP Computer science.
However I have also taken AP Language and AP Literature.
I have also taken 4 years of Spanish (honors not AP)

1 Like
31

I’m not an AO but everything I have read suggests DigitalDad is right. You are doing what you can in terms of course work/grades to impress highly-selective colleges as an intended STEM major. As I gather you know, that alone doesn’t guarantee you admissions to the most selective colleges, but I really would not worry about your class rank.

1 Like
32

Does class size affect the meaning ascribed to class rank? For example, does a smaller class size (say, 100 seniors) render the decile or quartile rank more or less significant than a larger class size (say, 500)?

33

In “A is for Admission” (Michele Hernandez) about the Dartmouth process in the 90s, there was a chart in the book that I recall related to calculating the Academic Index which I think did suggest class size affected the meaning of rank (at that time and at that school).

2 Likes
34

Theoretically if smaller School A was a random sample of larger School B, it shouldn’t matter. But rarely will that really be the case.

1 Like
35

If STEM might represent engineering in your case, note that the majority of the Ivies fall outside of the top 20 in their category when ranked by U.S. News for engineering.

However, if your anticipated major will be in another STEM field, this might be worth stating.

1 Like
36

The high schools may not use rank, but the college profile sent with the transcript from the high school makes it pretty easy to discern, and admissions officers absolutely look at that to help decipher what a particular GPA actually means. Dean J from UVA talks about this a lot.

1 Like
37

Wow.

The top ranked universities (“Ivies and top 20”) will look at your actual grades. They will also look at what courses you have taken, including course rigor.

However, acceptance at “top 20” universities is definitely a reach for nearly every strong student, and is definitely not based on “who has the most APs”. Having close to all A’s (even if a B sneaks in somewhere) and a few APs will put you in the “academically qualified” category, and then it comes down to a long list of other issues including the perception of fit. Looking at a later post I see that you actually have a large number of AP classes.

I think that you should continue to take the classes that are right for you, and do not worry about it. I think that you are doing very well. Make sure that you apply to safeties (including financial safeties).

Also, from personal experience and the experience of close relatives, highly ranked graduate programs definitely accept a LOT of students who did not graduate from a “top 20” undergraduate program.

3 Likes
38

What are these?

I do not see any Engineering options on the AP course list: AP Courses and Exams – AP Students | College Board

2 Likes
39

Are you sure your HS submits rank? The vast majority of HSs with this type of profile do not submit rank, as submitting class rank tends to hurt more students than it helps. One key exception to this generalization is public HSs in states where the public college system emphasizes rank, such as Texas.

40

However, note that even in the absence of official class ranking from the high school, colleges ask counselors to rank the student on the counselor’s report.

The options are:

  • No basis
  • Below average
  • Average
  • Good (above average)
  • Very good (well above average)
  • Excellent (top 10%)
  • Outstanding (top 5%)
  • One of the top few encountered in my career

With a top 15% rank, unless there are subjective reasons for your counselor to see you more favorably over others of higher rank, the OP is likely to get only a “Very good” mark on that question about academic achievements.

1 Like