<p>I attend a pretty competitive school (rank 76 = 95% UW gpa). At the time, I'm a Freshmen and it's almost the end of the year. My average right now is a 92 and next year I will be taking some challenging electives. In Junior year and Senior year I will be taking a bunch more. </p>
<p>I'm worried that I won't be able to be top 10% in my graduating class. My 92 UW gpa right now is killing me. Next year the electives will drain my time and the grade in that class won't be as high as regular courses. This will make it extra difficult for me to lift my UW GPA up. </p>
<p>Anyone have any suggestions and tips? I'm really worried. The electives will be super challenging and I don't know if I can pull off a 95% gpa at the end of Junior year. </p>
<p>What is your rank out of (76/80? 76/500?) If you’re aiming for top 10% that’s great, but just like how being valedictorian doesn’t guarantee you acceptances anywhere, neither does the top 10%.
Also remember that weighted GPA matters a whole lot more than unweighted.
Do the best you can do and really do try to bring up that GPA. But remember that GPA isn’t everything, your soft factors (like, you taking very challenging electives) can help explain a slightly lower GPA.
Also remember not to take classes that are way above your head, there’s no shame in saying you can’t handle the work and going into an easier class.</p>
<p>It all depends on what your goals are. You don’t need to be in the top 10% of your class to get into a decent college. On the other hand, if you hope to attend an elite college with acceptance rates under 20%, you are seriously underestimating your chance of getting in even you work your behind off. The students who get into these elite colleges by and large took the most challenging courses available, got almost all A’s and had 15-20 hours a week left over to pursue multiple ECs and community service projects.</p>
<p>How? Because they could finish much of the work required of them in their high school classes with minimal effort. My son, for example, never ever cracked open a book to study for a math or science class and got pretty near 100% on most tests. Some of his classmates, on the other hand, were stronger in writing classes and could write a stellar 5-page paper in one long evening. </p>
<p>If you can do neither of these things, you can still get accepted to an elite school, but only about 2% of those below the top 10% in class rank get accepted. You can bet that most of these 2% have a strong hook (exceptional athlete, Daddy has his name on a building) or a strong story (recent immigrant from a war-torn country who used to dodge sniper fire to get to school) or national-level accomplishments.</p>
<p>Even if you do get in, you could be miserable. Think your high school is competitive? What happens when half the kids in your college class are high school vals and no more than 30% of the class gets an A? It’s so much easier to go to a respectable state university and get near straight A’s with little effort, then apply to the elite colleges for your graduate degree. In many ways, it’s easier to excel in graduate school because you only have to be good at one subject – the one presumably that you love most.</p>
<p>“If you can do neither of these things, you can still get accepted to an elite school, but only about 2% of those below the top 10% in class rank get accepted. You can bet that most of these 2% have a strong hook (exceptional athlete, Daddy has his name on a building) or a strong story (recent immigrant from a war-torn country who used to dodge sniper fire to get to school) or national-level accomplishments” </p>
<p>Woah woah woah that’s just not true. The lions share of high schools don’t report rank.
Most of the time 80% or so of the incoming freshman class who reported class rank were in the top 10%, but the “who reported class rank” is a big factor. </p>
<p>Also there are no schools where the majority of students were valedictorian. None. Nada. Zippo. Zilch. </p>
<p>And in the case where you never have to study, then you get to college with no study skills and are up the proverbial creek. </p>
<p>Don’t be discouraged, really. Just try as hard as you can. And when it comes time to take your boards knock them out of the park! If you have incredible boards and so-so rank the adcoms will chalk that up to “incredibly difficult school.”</p>
<p>Just try hard and pursue what you’re passionate about</p>
<p>@CollegeAppChick - if you are referring to the most competitve colleges, you are misinformed. Adcoms at these schools generally consider UW GPA exclusively - they expect students to take the most rigorous curriculum available and earn top grades. Every high school uses a different weighting system for Honors/APs/etc. and thus weighted GPAs mean essentially nothing. Simply put, they want to see the most demanding courses possible and mostly A’s earned in all of them.</p>
<p>Also, while I agree that a majority of high schools do not report class rank, your estimates are too low. If you google each university’s Common Data Set, you will see that Harvard’s freshman class had 96% in the top 10% of their high school class (for those high schools that reported rank). Similarly, Duke had 93% and Northwestern had 92%. LoremIpsum is entirely correct - if the OP thinks high school is competitive, an elite university where students are far more accomplished will be misery.</p>
<p>However, I heartily concur with your bottom line advice - work hard but enjoy high school. Don’t spend these years trying to achieve a goal that might not be possible or even desirable.</p>
<p>I’m not sure which part of my answer you consider absurd.</p>
<p>If you think a Weighted GPA of 5.1 on a 4.0 scale is impressive, how do you compare it to a high school where only APs are weighted and students are not allowed to take APs until junior year? Some high schools only add a weight of 0.5, so a 4.3 W GPA would be remarkable at this school while a 4.3 W GPA at other schools would not be in the top quartile. Weighted GPAs are a crutch that high schools use for determining Class Rank to discourage students from taking easy classes for high GPAs. They don’t want a student who took a bare minimum number of academic courses to earn Valedictorian status.</p>
<p>If you are taking issue with the reported percentages of freshmen in the top 10% of their high school class for highly selective colleges, then you can simply check each Common Data Set, published by the university. For the statistics, I cited, you should refer to Section C10:</p>
<p>You’re a high school freshman, asking a question and now you’re deciding what is and isn’t true? Come on, man… What RMLdad said is correct, at elite private colleges the vast majority of students whose high school reports rank are in the top-10% of their class, and it would be accurate to say that most of these students are also near the very top of the class. Class rank is often a flawed measure, but top colleges have more than enough applicants about to graduate at the very top of their class to not need to take a second look at your application. In other words, work very hard to be academically competitive for top schools if that is your goal. I did get into UChicago with a class rank of 13% which is why I will say that class rank is part of a whole application to be considered holistically, but life is much harder not being in the top-10% even if your high school is very competitive.</p>
<p>OP – as a freshman, my advice to you is to do your best, taking the most challenging courses that you can handle. Find activities that interest you., etc.</p>
<p>To the question in general – GPA/Class Rank are difficult questions. Some schools have Grade Inflation others don’t. All 95% GPAs are not created equal. Some schools have a reputation for providing a student body that is more prepared for success at top schools. All Top 10% Rankings are not created equal. So, unless you’re applying to a school whose admission is purely formulaic, it’s an impossible question to answer really.</p>
<p>The only thing one can say – “More is better”. In otherwords, a 97 GPA is better than a 95. Being ranked in the first decile is better than being ranked in the second decile.</p>
<p>A better indicator, IMO is Naviance if your school has it. This looks at the GPA’s/Standardized Tests from students at your HS and how they did in admissions on a school-by-school basis.</p>
<p>SO. if I am ranked top 120 then i’m borderline 10% of the school. 120/1200. My school is pretty huge, so getting a 94 unweighted GPA would do it.</p>
<p>You can take LoremIpsum’s advice or not. You can agree with LorimIpsum or not (I don’t always agree). But LoremIpsum’s answers are NEVER absurd. They give an opinion that is always well though out from someone who spends a lot of time trying to help people here, and speaks from great experience.</p>
<p>Being #120, even if it puts you in the top 10% will still not be a huge advantage. Unless you have exceptional test scores and/or a stellar personal story, there are roughly 100 students from your high school that are more competitive than you.</p>
<p>Even if you are valedictorian, top universities are not singularly impressed. I heard Duke’s Dean of Admissions say that they rejected 1,500 Valedictorians who had applied for the Class of 2017.</p>
<p>I return to my original advice, which echoed LoremIpsun’s: Work hard, but enjoy high school.</p>