<p>Kel-- “What I’ve heard about “crappy schools” and GPAs is that often students get a 4.0, are top-ranked, and still grossly unprepared for college.”</p>
<p>This is why we have standardized tests.</p>
<p>Not ranking is not good or bad. Colleges that use ranking calculate it anyway based on kid’s GPA and class profile. I had asked this question during one of info college sessions with college admissions. More so, in some cases kid cannot even make top 1-2% because class is too small. For example, D’s HS class had 33 kids. No ranking. But in addition, the top student can make only top 3%, not top 1-2%, simply because 1 person out of 33 represents 3%. Colleges take all of it into consideration. No worries about staff that you cannot control. Kids who done their job and got it good in GPA and tests will be recognized by college admissions one way or another.</p>
<p>^^ But also lots of test-optional schools. I don’t have an opinion on test-optional either way, because some smart kids really are just bad test-takers; and then others test badly because they don’t know the material or haven’t been taught the appropriate reasoning skills.</p>
<p>181818: In my case, my school was an IB school. However, IB classes were ranked the same as non-IB classes. So a 4.0 student was rank 1/400 or so regardless of one’s class distributions. We had 19 valedictorian 4.0 students in my year, and so such a figure devalues its inherent worth since admissions officers don’t really know where you stand among those 19. I had the hardest courseload and highest grades out of my peers, so I had my GC mention that despite the way our school ranked, I technically was the highest-performing student of the class (with an average of 97% or so in all my classes). I figured it helped a lot in admissions, because being at the upper end of that 19/400 says a lot more than being at the lower end (I had really good test scores so I figure they could have made a reasonable guess anyway, but I wanted to ensure admissions officers had the clearest picture of my application possible in terms of where I stood).</p>
<p>Admission will have very clear picture, I believe taht most posters here worry about nothing. Kids who has worked hard, got their GPA and scores will be given crdit by admission at UG level. The things that make diff. in my observation are connections and URM status, the rest fall out in some order depending on demographics of college. Sometime name of HS might make a diff. I strongly believe that it was in case of my D. Staff like ranking, weighted/uw (some admissions recalculate GPA anyway) is not as important. As I mentioned before if program admits top 2% and applicant was top of her class still not making top 2% because of very small class, admission will know that. Do not worry about staff that cannot be controlled, take care of what you can and you will do just fine.</p>