<p>Regarding he importance of class rank, google the Ivy Academic Index. It used to be just for athletes, but now has expanded to become a screening mechanism for many Ivy candidates of all types. For a student at the top of the class, class rank is by far the most important factor in the Index, so much so that, depending on class size at the school, Val or Sal can be worth as much as 150 - 200 points on the SAT compared with Top 10% (indeed worth about 100 points over top 5%). The importance of class rank diminishes somewhat as the comparison shifts to say top 3% v. top 10%.</p>
<p>Waverly is on the money on this one. She is good. Gave her my son’s stats last December, and she predicted correctly each school he would get into from the stats (4.3 GPA unweighted, 2130 SAT). Admitted UVA, W&M, WF, Va. Tech, OSU. WL at JHU, Duke (probably due to double legacy status), and Chicago. Denied at Vandy.</p>
<p>The problem with the academic index lies with the schools that don’t rank or worse, rank only by decile. Our high school opted to go to decile ranking which hurts those at the very top. Your academic index with a “top 10%” which the AI averages to top 5% can be a 4/9 when it computes as a 9/9 if you use your GPA, provided it is a 4.3 weighted or higher.
The students have the option of not putting their decile ranking on the transcript and many at the top choice that route.</p>
<p>Should be “choose that route”…</p>
<p>Our school is the same as jandjdad - ranks by decile only, and it is on the transcript with no option to leave it off. My S is reasonably certain he is in the top 1%, but won’t be ranked the #1 student in the class, the only honor given.</p>
<p>Is this going to hurt him? What to do?</p>
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<p>This doesn’t appear to be true at Brown, the only Ivy that provides us with this information. For their Class of 2015, they accepted 362 vals and 120 sals, for a total of 482 (val + sal). They also accepted 1,065 in the top 10% of their class and 60 in the second tenth and below, along with 1,692 from schools that don’t provide class rank. So vals and sals represented 14.6% of those accepted. Unless “hooked” candidates accounted for 72% or more of those accepted–a pretty dubious assumption-- it can’t be the case that vals and sals were a majority of the unhooked who were accepted. That’s just a wild exaggeration.</p>
<p>I’m not saying it’s unimportant. In Brown’s Class of 2015, vals were accepted at a 19% rate, sals at 14%, and those in the top 10% at a 10% rate. Below the top 10%, you might as well forget about it: only 2% were accepted, and it’s likely this includes star athletes and heavy development cases. Those from high schools that don’t rank fared about as well as those in the top 10%: they were accepted at a 9% rate.</p>
<p>So clearly it’s an advantage to be a val, and a somewhat smaller advantage to be a sal. My basic view is that most selective colleges now care most about that top 10% figure, because it counts pretty heavily in their US News rankings which they all care about (though many will deny it), and it’s one of the easiest ranking factors for them to control. (GPA, in contrast, counts for nothing at all in the US News rankings). Being in the top 10% won’t get you in, but falling below the top 10% will almost certainly keep you out unless they’ve got some other very compelling reason to admit you, i.e., you have a very powerful hook.</p>
<p>Here’s a sampling of the percentage of the freshmen in the top 10% of their HS class at a variety of highly selective colleges and universities:</p>
<p>Harvard 95%
Stanford 90%
MIT 98%
Chicago 89%
Johns Hopkins 87%
Notre Dame 87%
UVA 90%
Michigan 92%
Tufts 85%
Williams 90%
Pomona 91%
Middlebury 86%
Haverford 94%</p>
<p>Notice, though, that it drops off pretty sharply after that:
Boston College 79%
NYU 61%
U Rochester 79%
U Miami 68%
GW 74%
Vassar 65%
Bates 66%
Colgate 64%
Oberlin 69%
Macalester 69%</p>
<p>I have a question about this. What about students that are vals or sals because they “beat the system?” My friend is ranked 3rd out of 350 students, putting her in the 1%. The two students ranked above her actually received the same grades in her in every class they had together, but did not take electives (took less classes), because electives are worth 4.0 and bring gpas down. Basically, she is not sal or val because she took more classes while her classmates chose not to take those electives.
How is it fair to her if her rank goes against her? She has the same grades as val and sal! Would colleges recognize that?</p>
<p>What’s really unfair is schools that don’t weight AP and honors classes, like mine. </p>
<p>I’m currently ranked first but I’m in fierce competition with a few others, but they take ****-easy classes while I’m in all honors and AP classes. But my GPA won’t reflect that. It’s BS and it really puts a lot of pressure on me.</p>
<p>The importance of class rank really depends on the high school. For some high schools that are extremely competitive, class rank is de-emphasized because there are a huge amount of very strong students. For example, my high school is really rigorous and competitive that even a student in the top 20%, which would usually be considered sub-par for top schools, would be considered competitive for the Ivies and peer schools minus HYPSM. Last year, a unhooked Asian guy got into Dartmouth and he wasn’t in the top 10%. This year, one of my friends got into Cornell and he also wasn’t in the top 10%. I know this is all anecdotal, but it provides evidence against the common belief that you pretty much have to be a valedictorian/in the top 1% to get into a top school.</p>
<p>I agree, but the odds of being an unhooked applicant and getting into a top school without being in the top 10%, hell even the top 5%, are laughably low.</p>