I’ve been reading all of these posts on college confidential about people worried about their class rank and just overall people discussing it. But I feel like it does not tell the whole story. For example, I am at the top 15% of my class, have gotten straight As and A-s and have taken a fairly tough courseload with 4 APs. I have a pretty good transcript but my rank is being brought down by academic classes (that I still got As in). I am still not in the top 10% of my class, which I really wanted to be in. Considering all of this, is class rank really that important or transparent?
At some schools it is important. It is critical if you are a TX resident applying to Texas-Austin. Some schools would look at 4.0 student who is sub top 10% and say the school has high grade inflation. This is the case in many Northern Virginia high schools among others. Other schools like to boast about the percentage of enrollees in the top 10% of their class.
Waht have you not done that the top 14% of your classmates have done?
GPA is the primary variable in many, but not all, universities. There are weighted and unweighted GPAs. The weighted GPAs would reflect your AP coursework. Most universities and colleges know or judge the quality of your secondary school by their prior experience and/or by the historical profile of your graduating class. Universities attended by prior graduates and test profiles of graduating classes are often used. As standardized tests profiles are more accurate at predicting group academics than individual academics they are useful in this role. In other words it depends, in part, on your school profile.
Unless admission is done by a computer, your essay, EC’s, recommendations and projects can carry a lot of weight.
If available, you might check out the CDS 2017-2018 by searching on the university website. Participating universities will give a lot of information on GPA and testing averages of their last entering class.
During the admissions cycle last year we heard that several times from top schools that class rank is less important today than it used to be. In fact, many high schools – esp. privates – don’t rank their students anymore. And, weighting for rigor differs a lot across high schools, essentially meaning that in some high schools you are rewarded more for rigor than others.
I’ve also heard that many top schools recalculate everyone’s GPA based on their own formula so that it’s an ‘apples to apples’ comparison.
Bottom line – don’t worry about it and focus on what you can control by putting your best foot forward on your application and essays.
Let’s say you got a 1000 on your SAT. Pretty average overall. But if you are #1 in your class or the last one, that tells a college about how you fit into the context of your school. Did the best student get a 1000? or did the worst?
You can look in section C7 of a college’s Common Data Set to see how much class rank is emphasized. Usually it is “Very Important”
A class rank alone means little if you don’t know if/how grades are weighted, how difficult the curriculum is, the quality of the student body and so on. Many of the universities that request class rank also request a school profile from the guidance counselor so they have some idea what they’re looking at. But frequently high schools have a bit of a reputation and Admissions staff can ballpark things based on previous students. If the school is unknown then universities have to do their best. One thing service academies do, for example, is put a candidate’s standardized test result against the aggregate numbers from his high school to get an approximate rank.
Anyway, it’s only important sometimes, but in those cases it’s pretty important. Your GC should provide some context for the number when it’s submitted that will explain things on your behalf, but don’t sweat it until you know for sure how significant it is for your schools or scholarships.