My D’s HS ranked internally but didn’t release anything but deciles to colleges unless you were #1 or 2.
Internally, honor roll was shared in GPA order so all the kids knew their rank.
There was always a group of kids gaming the ranking by taking no AP courses (there was no AP bump at D’s HS) but the school worked around that by being stingy on classification of course rigor to colleges so it works out in the end. Also the highest academic classification combined GPA and standardized test scores for seniors.
Same for ours. They rank internally but only to determine top 10%, 25% and 50% for weighted and unweighted. Otherwise they can’t calculate that.
Years ago, after I graduated from the same district (almost 35 years) they got rid of ranking. They did this because one kid could have a 3.95555 and another could have a 3.95 and they could be 5 ranked spots apart. They found this is not really fair because there is not really much significant difference between the two GPAs, so to avoid that and unnecessary competition between students they got rid of that. We do still have a valedictorian both for weighted and unweighted GPA and I’ve never seen them be the same person. The unweighted usually has a 4.0 the weighted usually doesn’t. Most likely because they took stronger rigor and got stuck with an A- or two by some of these teachers which is totally ok for the rigor. There are no give me’s or extra credit in those classes.
They also give salutatorian but no one knows how they calculate that because we always seem to have more than one for both W and UW and I highly doubt there are that many with the same GPA.
For the kids who have gotten in binding ED so far: any idea on data as to whether a higher absolute number of kids was admitted than previous yrs? Seems as though some schools are definitely up. Of course, they could be aiming for a bigger first yr class, so % of the class ED may not end up being that higher than prior yrs by the time we get to May. Just wondering…admissions seems all over the map this year. I am starting to be concerned all the Earlies will cut down the RD admits significantly.
Our school doesn’t rank because certain classes you are required approval to take and as such that creates an imbalance between GPAs if not all kids who want to take honors and AP can do so. It is an arbitrary thing based on spots too, just because you are approved doesn’t mean you get to take it, either. There is a finite number of spots.
The state of NC requires us to rank. Our district got rid of Val/Sal, but some kids still take pictures of their number to prove their greatness and post it
Hi - If your daughter wants football and the sports scene, Emory and Wash U should be out. Both are D3. My D19 attends Emory as an athlete and was also recruited by Wash U. Sports are not a big thing at all at either school, except to a very few. Now for academics that would challenge your daughter, they’re excellent choices.
I agree. Zero school spirit around sports at Wash U. I know some athletes there and they knew that going in but, for both of them, it was a ticket into an amazing school where they may not have been admitted without being recruited.
We know some similar types. One of D19’s friends (non-athlete) is transferring out due to lack of social life and to a smaller extent, lack of school spirit.
Absolutely agree about ranking. Many kids at our school drop out of band for rank. We were not going to drop something my son loves to fight for top 10. It is almost impossible to be in the band and be in the top 10 (actual rank, not %) at our school. If they drop band they can take 3 more AP classes than band kids, which can bump GPA a lot, since band is not weighted.
We have kids at our school who go out of their way to take college classes because they add to the GPA for ranking. My son maxed out on AP (5 last year) but he didn’t want to give up his engineering academy (4 year elective program) and there was no way he would give up his comp swimming schedule. I’m glad because even though the 4.0 max gpa elective brought down his GPA (how silly does that sound?!?!), he maximized his childhood experience. Of course, that bumps him down to #25 in class ranking so it comes with a ranking cost.
Someone posted this about Brown stats, but I don’t know how many were admitted ED last year in regards to whether or not their class is bigger and how much bigger.
53% rejected, 30% deferred, and almost 900 offers of admission made to 5,540 applicants (largest ED applicant pool in history and 22% increase over last year).
It would be interesting to know if the split between rejected and deferred changed much from previous years. If the rejected percentage increased substantially, that could indicated that a large percentage of the overall increased pool was, at least in part, due to the school going test optional and kids reaching beyond their stats.
In their school paper, the dean at Brown was interviewed and he said 16% ED app increase. With 4562 app last year, 16% increase in app this year, the 17% acceptance rate in 2021 would add up to 900 accepted. I like that they are bringing in 100 more kids.
What we don’t know is how the extra 100 ED acceptances will impact RD…is the target class size 100 greater than last year? Or the same as last year? If the latter, RD is going to be brutal.
Not sure. The fixed asset is housing so my gut feel is they have to stick to that. With the vaccine, they could accept more if vaccine roll out is slow (lower yield result) or keep similar annual number of acceptance if vaccine roll out is seamless.
From the Amherst ED page. I don’t know absolute number but pretty easy to approximate I would think. IIRC they plan on having the freshman class stay the same size as normal. There is a bit on info there from emails sent from Amherst to school GC’s of applicants.
