<p>Most colleges would say class rank is a very important part of their admissions process. However isn't this a little unfair depending on your situation? If you are top 10% of your class with a 3.4 at a lackluster school but your only top 30% at a competetive school, will this hurt your admission chances? Or do admission officers just look at this to see how competetive your high school is?</p>
<p>I have a 3.4 and i consider that quite good. i am probably not even in the top 25% of my class, but a lot of people in my grade take easy classes and end up getting high GPAs. luckily though, my school doesn't officially rank.</p>
<p>colleges want the best from each high school, crappy or not. thats why they also take a look at your sats, etc.</p>
<p>It would be unfair if the adcoms were completely shallow and don't delve further -- that's why GCs are asked to fill out HS profiles. Put yourself in their shoes. Why wouldn't they want info on relative strengths of high schools? C'mon.</p>
<p>look man, 2200 sat. 2350 sat II (3 subjects), some extracurricular stuff, work experience, here and there. 4 in calc. AB (international, no ap offered in my school). 3.4 GPA, borderline top 20% in my high school
rejected by almost every school i applied</p>
<p>ice where did u apply and where did u get accepted/rejected?</p>
<p>it's fair enough... there's a reason why a crap school is called "lackluster". A school like yours capable of having its percentile that high probably has more resources at its disposal then a easier rank school. </p>
<p>What do you mean by fair? Nobody said that you had to attend an upper middle/upper class school probably in or near the suburbs...</p>
<p>penn, nyu, cornell, virginia, usc, uc-berkeley, ucla, northwestern</p>
<p>It seems to be the way the pros work. Otherwise people from realtively unknown conferences would never make it. You are rated against the competition you played against with all that that means. I am not sure fairness is the issue, it is simply one more measure.</p>
<p>I don't think the unfairness comes from the fact that some schools are more rigorous. The problem is that there are so many ways of ranking. For example, at some schools there may be a class of 1000 and 150 may be number one because that school decides that anyone with a GPA of 4.0 or above is "number one." Another school with a class of 1000 may decide that they will split hairs to separate the top 150 students. Therefore, a student at the second school could have a great GPA but not even be top 10%, but the student at the first school with a similar GPA gets to put their ranking as "number one" on their college apps, even if the two schools are similar in terms of competitiveness. I guess the adcoms know how to sort things out from the school profile and description of how rankings are done.</p>
<p>I think it's fair. It should be understood that it's only a ranking of GPA, and not a ranking of overall intellectual virtue.</p>
<p>Unweighted class rank doesn't really have any meaning .. but my school doesn't have weighted. Colleges see the irrelevance.</p>
<p>What does class rank mean when the GPA is not weighted? Students are ranked according to their ability to accummulate "A+'s", regardless of the rigor of the classes they are taking. You are comparing kids who are playing the "class rank" game (taking easy classes, lots of study halls, etc.) to kids who are trying to challenge themselves by taking the toughest classes available. And guess who typically comes out on top.</p>
<p>Class rank consideration is unfair. Its impossible to adduce any logic to the contrary.</p>
<p>I think in some ways it's unfair because it somewhat rests on how many AP courses a student takes, and whether or not they know how many AP courses the other students are taking. Ice-frappuccino, do you really think they rejected you becasue of class rank? That would be unfair in the extreme. </p>
<p>Seriously, I can't see them rejecting someone just because their rank is slightly lower than other applicants'.</p>
<p>I don't think the ranking -or- the gpa matters at all except in the context of the school. Adcom's that read and evaluate complete files (at all of the top 30 for sure) know that a 30% rannking at Harvard Westlake (I don't think H-W actually ranks, but over the years the adcoms know that a 3.6, for example, is top 30%) is equivalent to top 2% at Santa Monica High School, or top 5% at a "California Distinguished" public high school. And a top 50% at H-W is equivalent to top 10% at Santa Monica High, etc and a top 10% at the "California Distinguished" public high school.</p>
<p>Or that a top 5% at a really, really lousy high school where only 25% of the kids go to college, would likely flunk out at H-W and be 50% at Santa Monica High and 30th percentile at the "California Distinguished" high school.</p>
<p>Guys & Gals, the adcoms know how to contextualize and normalize. They do it all day long for months on end, year after year. They know what the rank means at your school, what the gpa means at your school, and what that rank and gpa mean in the context of the AP, Honors, or other rigorous courses taken. </p>
<p>They're not stupid!</p>
<p>It occurs to me that some of the posters here might relate this to batting average of a baseball player.</p>
<p>If you were to write a baseball scout for the Dodgers, and ask for a tryout based on your lifetime batting average of .430, what would the scout want to know? He'd want to know against what competition -- High School? OK, which league (each league has a different strength of opposing pitching). Wood bat or aluminum? (aluminum adds about 30% to a batting average). </p>
<p>Just as baseball scouts know what a batting average means only if they also know league, wood, etc., the adcoms know what a gpa and/or rank mean in their specific context. Adcoms are paid talent scounts. They know what they're doing! (most of the time)</p>
<p>skp -- an adcom will know that a C in AP Bio is equivalent to a B in Honors Bio which is equivalent to an A in regular Bio. Same for Physics, US History, etc. etc. A gpa and rank mean nothing to them outside the context of the exact courses that comprise that gpa. You should read the book "Gatekeepers". The adcoms at the top 50-75 colleges look at <em>every</em> single class the applicant has taken, the grade for each course, and form their impression of the classroom performance of that applicant. They know the difference between AP Calculus AB and BC, the difference between AP Bio and AP Enviro, etc. And all this is taken into account.</p>
<p>i HATE that my high school doesnt weight our gpa because i always took the most challening courses and i got mostly As and some Bs. my gpa is a lackluster 3.7. but weighted, its not bad.</p>
<p>studentX: why is it unfair? (please state reasons)</p>
<p>ice.frap: the UCs do not consider class rank at all (well officially they don't) bcos less than half of California public high schools actually rank.</p>
<p>Sarah: don't be concerned about your HS not ranking. A highly selective school will bypass the 4.0 student at your HS if they only took college prep classes, but will give much more consideration to students in all honors/ap/ib, even if they earned a few Bs.</p>