<p>My school does not rank, but I have been told by the academic dean and my counselor that I am the prospective valedictorian. I think that colleges knowng I'm #1 could be very, very helpful in terms of admission. I want to put that I am #1 in my applications for next year, but I also don't want colleges to think that I am lying.</p>
<p>How can I tell colleges that I am #1, even though my school doesn't rank?</p>
<p>Just tell them the truth. Say that there is no formal ranking but that the academic dean and your GC told you that you have the top grades. Also suggest to your GC that s/he also include that information in his/her report to the schools.</p>
<p>If your school doesn’t rank, then you’re not number 1!</p>
<p>In all seriousness, there’s no place on the application to actually put your own class rank – unless you include it in supplemental information, which I don’t recommend. However, your guidance counselor will have to fill out a recommendation/information sheet in which they are asked your approximate class rank, and this is when they fill in that information.</p>
<p>thanks! my concern is simply that there isn’t enough room on applications which generally ask:</p>
<p>Rank: ______ out of a class of _______</p>
<p>Should I just squeeze it in above?</p>
<p>I would just put 1 out of however many, to be completely honest. It certainly looks better! If you are the presumptive valedictorian, then ostensibly you are their unofficial number one, and it wouldn’t be unreasonable for you to put #1.</p>
<p>However, I would discuss it with your guidance counselor first to make sure that there’s no conflicting information. You don’t want to put “#1 out of 300” and then she writes a different rank or “our school does not rank students”…invariably, they will suspect you as the wrong one.</p>
<p>ask your counselor to say that in your app or take it like a man. pretty simple</p>
<p>honestly, being the top person in your class doesn’t help very much. what matters is whether you are at the top of the applicant pool. So what. There’s somebody with higher grades in your class. If they aren’t applying to the school(s) you are, it doesn’t matter, and even if they are, they are simply one more application in a whole sea of them.</p>
<p>class rank is used in order to determine the context with which to judge your scores and stats. Yay, so you got a near-4.0. Is this something very hard to do in your school? Is your school very competitive?<br>
Is there a sufficiently large contingent of students with very very high grades that it is not likely that a 4.0 in your school necessitates ungodly amounts of work, thus debunking an assertion that an applicant are very smart yet has a lower GPA?</p>
<p>lmao ok thanks I’ll talk to my counselor</p>
<p>I disagree, I believe that being a valedictorian definitely does help. My school does not rank either, but if you say that a college wants it, then they will give it to you.</p>
<p>My school doesn’t rank officially, but if you are number one in the class, they will report that rank (and that is the only rank they report) - maybe your school could make an exception?</p>
<p>hmm interesting ideas. these are all really helpful. I will ask the academic dean (he’s my english teacher lol)</p>
<p>Does your school profile show the range of GPA, like the first quintile is 4.79 - 4.09 (say as of 6th semester for the class of 2009)? If your GPA is 4.79, a college knows you are the top.</p>
<p>My GC put it in her rec. We do rank, but not weighted. She indicated that if ranked, I would be ranked one in the class.</p>