<p>if 10% of the entire class at a school marks above 90 every year(that's A-/A/A+), would you say that school is competitive? </p>
<p>ON the other hand, if 10 kids in one class gets above 90, is that also competitive? (there IS a difference, you see..)</p>
<p>Or is that like NORMAL for any high school?????
Share your thoughts!</p>
<p>10%........ I guess not. Isn't that usually the case for any high school? </p>
<p>However, if your school profile reads "only 10 students in her class got A's this year" ---> that's much more impressive. But of course, that depends on how many students there are total in your class</p>
<p>Regarding Post#1:
Compared to my public HS and some others
I would say 10% A's imply relative lenience.</p>
<p>In most core courses at my HS (graduated '08) much less than 5%
got A's. </p>
<p>The GC's and teachers typically comment on your reccs on a school
wide basis not on a class-by-class basis. The readers of your app will
not have the time to be making hair splitting decisions between your
"class-section" and your school?</p>
<p>Yes, compared to college, where the median gpa is what now... 3.35 or 3.4? It sounds like the median gpa at your school is more like 3.0.</p>
<p>I would assume this is why adcoms don't really pay attention to raw gpa... they look at rank in class, which if not given by the school, can be extrapolated from the school's profile and the university's prior experience with the High School in question. They look at the individual classes an applicant chose to take. Really... they go class by class and then form an opinion about rigor and the strength of the applicant.</p>
<p>So, rank in school is the #1 "grade" criterion, combined with the general difficulty of the school relative to the other 21,000 high schools in the U.S.</p>
<p>Example: highly competitive high school's student at 8% in graduating class is probably Valedictorian at most high schools. You think adcoms don't know this? From the same highly comptetitive high school, a student at 40% would be 5% at a normal high school. Adcoms have decades of getting a feel for this kind of comparison between a student at different high schools. They also have the advantage of seeing over the decades how the 40% kid from the highly competitive high school did at their university in comparison to 5% kids from regular high schools.</p>
<p>More competitive than my school, but that doesn't take much. Sorry, I'm not too much help.</p>