<p>I've seen a lot on this forum that ppl have ranks such as 4/300 or 8/257, etc. My school does decile rank, so decile rank 1 means your in the top 10%, 2nd decile rank means top 20%, etc. If a student is in the top 10% of their class with about 500 students at a competitive school, how does this look ? I mean keeping in mind that that student could be anywhere on the list of top 50 students out of 500. So does a larger student body offset the fact that perhaps your not number 10 or number 2 according to rank ? (i also hear some colleges don't really look at rank, but that's another story.)</p>
<p>I'm really not sure how that works either...but ideally, they should evaluate your GPA and courseload for what it is instead of relying in pure rank relative to others, when exact rank is not given. My HS for example doesnt rank, because a very respectable 95/100 GPA would put you at around 200-250/750 in terms of rank. The top 35 or so poeple all have GPAs higher than 97, and the top 2-5 people have GPAs higher than 98. and my school sends those top 250 people to ivies or similarly ranked schools...so exact rank is not very telling in some situations, much less inexact rank.</p>
<p>well it probably hurts you if you are 2/500 and your counselor just says top 10%. i remember reading somewhere (not sure where, so i might be making this up) that they will just assume that you are in the middle.</p>
<p>The way our school sees it, however it's just a school of 800 total, 200 per class, that the decile system was instated only two years ago as a means of protecting students in the college admissions process [as well as not hurting students' feelings by blatantly giving them their rank] in that say you're ranked like 19 then school's will only see that you're in the top 10% rather than ranked 19/200. This obviously does not help the top five or so, however at least in our school the GC sorts of nudges in their letter this fact. However, if your school does do the decile system, then when they send the school profile along with the transcript [apparently they send these, never knew that], the deciles should be shown in the profile, how they're broken up, and how many students are in each profile. Thus, schools will be able to estimate where you lie in the decile. Though I remember thinking about this and how misleading it must have been when my school sent my info, cause I remember at the time the top decile was broken into 4.639-4.201 and mine was 4.389 at the time. Thus you would guess I was somewhere in the middle of this pack of twenty kids, not really though, my GC told me I was third since the top two kids had a GPA of 4.639 and 4.584 and were thus lightyears ahead. So yeah, there are def pros and cons to the whole decile system, but if you know that you're somewhere in the middle of the pack it definitely benefits you overall especially in a big school b/c obviously more kids means more competition.</p>
<p>We have 170...on the actual number rank system...and gpa to four decimal places on the percentage system</p>
<p>i.e 95.0234%</p>
<p>medical magnet school</p>
<p>competitive if you're like in the top 20%?</p>
<p>I hope the high # of students in your class gives you some slack. I am 15 out of over 500, and I think there's not too much of a difference between me and lik 7 or 8. Only the top 4 or 5 have me by more than .1, so it shouldn't matter much, esp. with toughest possible classes.</p>
<p>Ranking in deciles is, perhaps, the worst possible way to portray class rank data to colleges.</p>
<p>First, someone who is at the 89.9 percentile will be placed in the second decile while someone with a hundredth of a point higher GPA who is at the 90th percentile will be placed in the first decile. Decile ranking actually tends to accentuate statistically insignificant differences.</p>
<p>Next, many schools will, indeed, take a decile ranking and use the middle percentile on the rubrics they use to norm data. This is great for the person at the 90th percentile and not so great for the one in the 99th percentile. In other words, decile ranking tends to reward those who didn't do as well in school at the expense of those who performed better.</p>
<p>Finally, decile ranking STILL means that colleges get punished in the US News rankings for admitting kids below the top 10%. Decile ranking plays right into US News' hands.</p>
<p>I recommend Paul Attewell's report, "The Winner Take All High School." It's a study of the effect of class rank on admissions to elite colleges. Basically, Attewell's research strongly suggests that class rank has an outsized impact on admissions, and that high class rank against weak competition is better than lower class rank against tough competition.</p>
<p>Because of Attewell's research and other data, the vast majority of elite private schools (apparently, 80% to 90% of all non-parochial, private schools) do not provide class rank to colleges in any form whatsoever. This practice is becoming more and more prevalent at public magnet schools and high-performing suburban high schools. NACAC estimates vary, but it appears that something on the order of 40% to 50% of all high schools do not rank ... and for very good reason. They have figured out that ranking kids from schools that attract above average talent only hurts their kids.</p>
<p>When they rank you (for example, 3/250), the denominator is the number of students in your GRADE, right? (It doesn't make sense to pit you against other people in other grades.....)</p>
<p>yeah it is just your grade</p>
<p>We have 170...on the actual number rank system...and gpa to four decimal places on the percentage system</p>
<p>i.e 95.0234%</p>
<p>medical magnet school</p>
<p>competitive if you're like in the top 20%? I'm probably screwed:-</p>