True, but the larger point was about assuming that the portion in top 10% listed in CDS is applicable to the OP’s HS. The CDS top 10% is based on the 18% of matriculating students who submitted class rank, not the counselors report. HSs where >10% of students have 4.0s rarely submit class rank, so they are generally not included in the CDS figure. Instead I expect the CDS figure is largely based on different types of HSs for which a top 10% class rank usually corresponds to a different level of academic achievement.
It’s unclear what portion of Cornell admits/rejects received what counselor ratings in which category. I also wouldn’t assume that only the 10% of students with the highest class rank are rated “excellent” or higher in academic achievements. If it’s anything the other recommendations, far more than 10% may be given ratings for which the guidelines say top 10%
What is more clear, is there are many specific HS that have a good admit rate among students who are not within top 10% of class. As an example, some numbers for Harvard-Westlake are below for unhooked (“without distinction”). students in class of 2019 to 21 . Cornell doesn’t appear to expect unhooked kids to be anything approaching top 10% rank, at this selective HS.
More than 65th Percentile Rank (top 35%) – Admit Rate = 26%
Less than 35th Percentile Rank (bottom 35%) – Admit Rate = 9%
I have no idea how the OP’s HS compares, but he/she may be able to estimate using information from tools like Naviance, or information published by the HS. The numbers above for HW are based on the HW College Counseling Handbook, which is given to students/parents. Students can use the handbook to see admit rate for different HW GPA/rank range at different colleges.
These are PLTW (Project Lead the Way) which are all weighted as AP credit.
Only some high schools around the country offer these classes for students who want to pursue engineering
Perhaps an inference can be made, however, in that students attending selective high schools, such as Harvard-Westlake, commonly include this information in the original post.
There is high variability in how HSs treat PLTW courses. In my kids’ HS, PLTW courses are not weighted at all (in a system that has on level, honors and high honors levels), and only count as electives.
Many colleges consider PLTW courses as electives, not core courses as well.
Hmm. Following the links from the page you found, here’s what I see about PLTW engineering courses. High School Engineering Curriculum Grades 9-12 | PLTW. I don’t see anywhere here or on the page that you linked that these are considered AP courses or are intended to result in students receiving AP credit from colleges. I would guess colleges would vary a lot in how they treat these courses (as @Mwfan1921 mentioned).
Looks like you have 9 APs if I am counting correctly: AP Chem, AP Physics 1, AP Physics 2, AP Calculus (AB or BC?), AP Stats, APES, AP CS (P or A?), AP Lang, AP Lit.
The engineering courses are listed as AP courses on my HS transcript and worth 5.0 credits each, so I am not sure why you are saying this. There is also a national exam for each course.
Not sure if this will add any value to this discussion, but for the past 7 years at my school, the valedictorian has 100% of the time been accepted to UCLA. I will let you guys interpret this however you’d like. Not sure how I’d interpret it myself lol.
Thank you. If your high school chooses to weigh these as AP courses, that’s their decision. There is nothing in this that says these are AP courses…at all. Please keep in mind that some colleges recalculate GPA using their own criteria for course choices.
I honestly don’t think your class rank affects admissions all that much…but your gpa surely does. And yours could very well be inflated if these courses are not included by colleges when recomputing.
I am not sure what your HS is telling you, but these do not appear to be AP courses. They are not listed on the College Board’s list of AP courses. At the PLTW web site the names of the courses do not have an “AP” prefix, and none of the PLTW material claims that they are AP courses.
If they are listed as “AP” on your transcript, my guess is that it may be because your high school considers the courses similar in level or rigor to an AP course, and using the HS’s own weighting, weights them the same as AP. However this doesn’t make the courses “AP courses.”
The reason to pay attention to this distinction is that AP courses are widely recognized across nearly all colleges, and result in college credit at many colleges. IB courses are also recognized widely, and typically result in college credit.
Other types of advanced courses may be great courses (in some cases more advanced than APs, for example many students take multivariable calculus at their high schools), but colleges will vary in how they view these courses, and whether they result in credit.
Some colleges do treat PLTW courses the same as DE classes. I have encountered this a few times as I have been looking at what course credit S23 and S24 might have for AP and DE classes. It is certainly not universal, but there are some colleges that have wording to the effect of, “We will not give college credit for any class taught in the high school rather than on a college campus with college students. We will make an exception for PLTW courses, however.” (That is a separate distinction from what AP credit they will give, by the way.)
Wouldn’t that only be the case if the PLTW students are also receiving college credit for these courses? (that is, the PLTW courses taught by the HS are also associated with DE credit from some accredited post-secondary institution?) From what I am reading, I don’t think that is the case for all PLTW courses taught in high schools?
I’m not familiar with PTLW, so it’s unclear to me whether every high school’s program has to be associated with a university. I have read WPI‘s statement on PTLW credit, and they will give credit for, it looks like, schools in Massachusetts that offer it because they partner with (all?) the Massachusetts schools. They say they will also give credit to schools that partner with RIT, but they will not give credit to schools that partner with a particular New Hampshire college, because of the way they administer the program. And then they go on to say it is possible to get credit if you have documentation from your class and your particular work & assessments.
The point, OP, is that you should look carefully at the policies of the schools you are considering applying to, if whether you get credit for PTLW classes makes a difference to you.