<p>I just found out that my school does not submit class rank because the class is so small and almost everyone is an IB student, meaning excellent students could potentially be in the bottom 50%. Unfortunately, a lot of the schools I'm going to apply to consider class rank as a "very important" admission factor. Am I in hot water? </p>
<p>Will the fact that I'm an IB diploma candidate be a mitigating factor?</p>
<p>No, schools won’t penalize you for not possessing a rank.</p>
<p>no class rank usually means hard courses and lots of competition</p>
<p>Good competitive high schools usually get rid of class rank; it won’t hurt you</p>
<p>I am always happy to hear that high schools do not rank, and especially the small schools. When I worked in an admission office at a very selective college, I would commonly see students who were ranked, say, 12th, in a class of 33. In some cases, the school was very strong. Conceivably, every one of those 33 students would be qualified to attend highly selective colleges. Yet the computer that created the “vote sheets” we used would assign a numerical rating to this student’s rank that was very unfavorable because, in fact, she wasn’t even in the top third of her class. Granted, the real human beings who got a hold of the applicant’s file would point out that, in fact, she had excellent grades in demanding classes, and there might be only fraction of points in such a small school that separated the students at the top of the class from those at the bottom. But, even so, I always objected to the concept of comparing a student in this situation to peers, even if our admission staff was able to see beyond it.</p>
<p>If there’s no rank to begin with, then the admission officials will be forced to look beyond the numbers from the get-go and see what–and how–the applicant is really doing, which is what the admissions process should truly provide for everyone.</p>
<p>Don’t colleges ask high schools that don’t rate to report “deciles” or something, though? I remember seeing that in the Common App. That worries me…my high school also doesn’t rank, because we have very small grades. I’m a great student who’s taking the same caliber of classes as anyone else, yet I’d probably be in the third decile or so, only because nearly everyone has grades like mine.</p>
<p>High schools are free to report any sort of ranking they maintain or to report no ranking whatsoever. But I always urge students (or parents) to ask their high school guidance department to clearly explain what colleges will … or won’t … receive.</p>
<p>Commonly, I encounter students who attend high schools that do not rank. These may be strong students who earn excellent grades–let’s say mostly A’s with the odd B here and there. But, at extremely competitive high schools, even a single B can plummet some students out of the top tenth of the class. But when the high school does NOT rank, the student with a B or two assumes that his target colleges won’t be viewing him as a second-decile candidate. </p>
<p>But there may be a surprise (no, not a good one): Even though no official rank has been assigned (and reported) to the student, the high school DOES tell the colleges that this student is in the second decile. So perhaps this student might have amended his list of target colleges, had he known exactly what colleges would be seeing from his high school. Similarly, some high schools that don’t assign a rank will, nonetheless, send out graphs that show where the applicant’s GPA falls in relation to the GPA’s of classmates … thus another de facto rank.</p>
<p>So, bottom line: High schools are not required to send ranks to colleges, but even some that claim not to rank will include a comparable alternative with a student’s transcript. So students and parents would be wise to talk to their school counselor and ask to see for themselves whatever the colleges will be seeing.</p>
<p>At my son’s small very rigorous high school (40 students/class) they do not rank nor do they provide a GPA. (I guess they don’t want the colleges to calculate their own rank based on GPA.) </p>
<p>They do however submit a list of how many As A-s B+s etc. were given out in each class. It is probably very annoying to the adcoms, but in order to figure out how strong a student is, they have to compare his or her grades to the list attached to the transcript. I think it works in our students’ favor as they seem to do very well in the admissions process.</p>
<p>The school won’t penalize you. After all, its not your fault that your school doesn’t rank its students :).</p>
<p>Be HAPPY! I think it’s a great thing! So many tiny factors at a large but competitive school can change things SO much. And, as you said, in a small school it’s barely even worth ranking. You could have 20 students but 15 of them earn straight As.</p>