Is the fact that UC's don't consider class rank a load of crap?

College Search & Selection
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<p>According to official common data sets - </p>

<p>The percentage of students in the top 10%:</p>

<p>Berkeley - 98%
Santa Barbara - 96%
San Diego - 100%
UCLA - 97%
Riverside - 94%
Davis - 100%
Irvine - 96%</p>

<p>To compare:
Harvard - 95.4%
Cornell - 92%</p>

<p>It seems highly dubious that the UC's don't look at class rank. I used the search function and googled extensively but I wasn't able to find a reasonable explanation for this percentage. It seems highly unlikely that such respectable schools would try and mislead students about the rankings - clearly there has to be SOME sort of cutoff. I am not saying a class rank cutoff is necessarily a bad thing, but the UC's shouldn't try to hide it and mislead students. </p>

<p>Am I missing something? Am I being an idiot?</p>

<p>I am not in the top 10% due to very poor freshman grades. My UC GPA is a 4.3 ( counting only sophomore and junior years ) and I have a 33 ACT with a 780 Math and APUSH scores.
I thought i had a decent chance at the UC's but I seem to be misguided.</p>

<p>It simply blows my mind that I have literally a ZERO percent chance at Davis and UCSD and my chances at HARVARD are higher than getting into UCSD. </p>

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<p>They do not consider your high school’s notion of class rank at all.</p>

<p>They are probably getting the approximate numbers from the Eligibility in Local Context (ELC) data. ELC basically says that if your UC admissions GPA (which excludes 9th grade) is in the top 9% of your high school’s recent historic UC admissions GPAs, they may admit you to a UC that you did not explicitly apply to (in practice, Merced) if you get shut out of those you did apply to.</p>

<p>Some UC admissions offices do consider having ELC to be a positive point in their admissions review, which means that class rank is indirectly related. But your “ELC rank” (based on UC admissions GPA) is likely much better than your high school rank, since your poor grades were in 9th grade that is not included in UC admissions GPA. A 4.3 UC admissions GPA is pretty close to the maximum possible, so it is hard to see you not having ELC unless your high school has extreme grade inflation or has a huge percentage of top-end students.</p>

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<p>I think you are misinterpreting the common data set. First of all the GPA ranges posted on the common data set is on a 4.0 scale (Unweighted). Second, I just copied the page from the UCD common data set and there is no % listed on the ranking <a href=“http://www.sariweb.ucdavis.edu/commondataset/cds20132014.pdf”>http://www.sariweb.ucdavis.edu/commondataset/cds20132014.pdf&lt;/a&gt;
I agree with @ucbalumnus that the numbers you are seeing are due to the ELC. My older son was in the top 15% of his class with a UC GPA of 4.2 and was accepted and happily attending UCD.</p>

<p>@SnickersU, with your GPA and ACT score you are a match for UCD and UCSD.<br>
Good Luck.</p>

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<p>Thanks for the quick reply @ucbalumnus‌ and @Gumbymom‌ ! </p>

<p>Good to know that I’m at a good academic standing for the ucs. Glad to be wrong!</p>

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<p>You might also be forgetting that UCs are not allowed to consider race (e.g. no affirmative action), whereas Harvard and Cornell are. UCs then depend much more on GPA and test scores, hence the higher percentage in the top 10%, where Harvard and Cornell can consider other factors and perform more of a holistic admissions process, which allows them to reach beyond just the top scoring and top GPA students.</p>

<p>There is some thought that if the Ivies were ever to eliminate AA and legacy preference, their student bodies would look a lot more like the upper UCs.</p>

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<p>UCs also tend to weight GPA more than test scores, so the GPA profile may be higher and the test score profile lower than “comparably selective” schools.</p>