Hello all 
So I recently found out that my school is actually a very rigorous international school in Hong Kong, and so I wondered, if my high school grades all students significantly lower than usual (we have very demanding grade boundaries), how would MIT see a few As on the transcript (A* is the highest grade)? Our teachers also seem to have very different standards. My history teacher, for example, gave me a C for the first semester grade, as he always gives low marks for the first semester to try to"pull our standards up". For reference, the top student in our class (or entire year for that matter) got a B. To make matters worse, our school doesn’t have an official ranking, though I figured out that I was in the top 3 (as our school only nominated the top 3 students for the Harvard Book Prize). We don’t have a GPA either, and from the university counselor, I heard that US schools do not usually request predicted grades. With no GPA, ranking, nor predicted grades, and just a report card that has a few Bs and Cs (due to demanding grade boundaries), would this pose a problem if I am applying to MIT? Then would that mean the standardized tests such as ACT/Subject Tests would increase in importance? Also, I heard something about a “school profile”, what is that all about? To make matters a bit more complicated, I am an US citizen, which means that I would be evaluated as a domestic applicant (supposedly). How does MIT try to find a reference point for all the numbers that they get from the applicants, especially the international ones? Thanks!
For MIT admissions success, its better to be a US citizen because 90% of seats go to US Citizens or permanent US residents and only 10% are reserved for international students.
I don’t know how MIT will handle not having a GPA calculated, I suspect they will go ahead and calculate it.
Many top universities in the USA will unweight GPAs, meaning they recalculate the GPA their own way.
All U of California campuses recalculate GPA their own way using the classes they care about.
So don’t worry about your school not calculating a GPA, MIT will just figure that out, I bet.
As to no ranking, again, it sounds like you know your ranking,and can self report it to MIT and other colleges. You may want to talk to your schools counselors about this, how do they handle the question of class rank for US university admission.