<p>I got rejected from Stanford last week, and my parents are convinced that it's the fault of my class rank... they're actually sort of starting to scare me now too. Not b/c I think class rank kept me out of Stanford (I honestly don't think Stanford cares about academics that much), but b/c I know it matters to other colleges.
My ranking is 16/450 (just outside of 3%, it's like 3.5% or so). Technically I'm valedictorian, since I have all A's and that's how my school decides, but I didn't take enough AP classes. However, my weighted GPA isn't too terrible, it's a little over 4.8. The issue is that my school is so competitive that one can have all A's and take reasonable classes and still be rank 30 or so. Will colleges just assume that grades are ridiculously inflated? (they're not, I swear, the students are just really intense). I don't know if this is important (but just in case), I go to a public school, currently ranked #77 by US News. It would be higher, but a couple years back, someone held a teacher hostage with a gun or something like that, and they moved the school down A LOT for safety concerns. I think it was around #30 the year before the gun incident?
I also don't think my schedule is too lax, as I basically took the most rigorous classes that fit with my interests. Part of the problem is that I'm interested in lab science, which take up 2 periods of a schedule, rather than just 1 like AP history classes. Plus there are only 2 APs that we were allowed to take sophomore year, AP Art History and AP Music Theory, and I didn't take either (most of the people with higher rankings than I took one, or both, of these). Looking back, that was probably a stupid move, but at the time it seemed like a waste to take a class I wasn't interested in when I barely had room for the classes I actually wanted to take.
Anyway. Do you think my ranking is going to be a dealbreaker or anything? How much will it hurt me if colleges assume grades are inflated?</p>
<p>Well actually I think it depends on the university(s), a university usually only feels so comfortable admitting only a certain percentage from ones school… which is sometimes reasons why rankings become a large but not dominant factor.</p>
<p>If you provided more information(your ECs, your SAT scores, etc.) we might be able to discern why you might have been rejected, but, honestly, no one on this forum will be able to point to the exact reason you were denied.</p>
<p>D was accepted last year RD. Her rank was 25 of 128, from a small competitive private high school. A girl ranked higher was denied during SCEA. </p>
<p>IMHO, class rank is not that critical at Stanford.</p>
<p>your class rank was not the reason you were deferred at stanford.</p>
<p>Don’t let your parents’ assumptions scare you. They have no way of knowing. Stanford is so unpredictable in it’s admissions, they are wasting their time with the analysis. </p>
<p>Top 3-4% is not going to get anyone rejected. Better to look at recs, ECs, essays for a weakness, and regroup for RD. Good luck.</p>
<p>Oh sorry, I’m pretty sure the reason why I got into Stanford is because I wasn’t exceptional enough. I’m just the type of person who likes to be involved with everything, and looking through the Stanford admits, they all were EXTRAORDINARY at one thing in particular. I’m more like “pretty good” at a lot of different things. Which isn’t as ideal. But hopefully I’ll be able to play it up for the rest of my schools. So yeah, don’t worry about trying to figure out why I got denied 
Thanks fauve!
And coolbreeze, that makes a lot of sense, although it sort of bugs me that colleges would have that quota sort of rule. So annoying.
Besides for the fact that only so many people can get in from each school, does anyone know how heavily class rank weighs for the average ivy-level college? Assuming (just for simplicity’s sake…) I’m the only applicant from my high school?</p>