That might be true for your children’s school because it is better well-known to AOs than my children’s school. Well-connected schools are not required to disclose as much information as less-connected schools. (Our school has had a few students accepted to Harvard and top-10 LACs only- not YPS) DS has already had to provide it for one application and all we could get out of the school was a decile. He was declined for the program. It was for a summer program at a highly selective school. Of course I can’t guarantee that this is why he wasn’t selected, but the ambiguity certainly didn’t help.
Many years ago, I went to a relatively unknown high school with a similar success rate at getting students admitted to highly selective schools. It had a no-ranking policy, too. One AO called my guidance counselor and told him that if he didn’t give them my class rank, I would be disqualified. He gave it to them and then wouldn’t tell me, but told me about the call because he didn’t appreciate it. I got in.
I don’t think it’s just well known schools. I’ve read that most schools in the US no longer provide a rank (someone else here more directly knowledgable about this may be able to confirm or refute).
What schools do is provide a school profile and distribution of stats. Colleges use this to determine the relative ranking of a student.
Our school is a generic, public high school in a suburb. Neither the township nor the high school are standing out among all of them in our area - so “well-known” certainly does not apply.
Our school (and many others around here) do NOT rank individually, often don’t have sal/val. However, our school does provide DECILE.
My daughter had applied to (and accepted by) many selective schools and none required that information. And our school does have former students attending Yale, Princeton, Columbia,… - you name it (these are just the ones I happen to recall from that year).
YOur school provides the colleges with a school profile that gives general information about the school and gpa ranges. How many APs are offered, what the typical course progression is, etc. It allows the colleges to estimate where your child is within the class and how rigorous their course selection is. Most HS dont rank to eliminate the ability of colleges to have ranking cut offs. I would not read anything into the lack of class rank
Beyond naming a Val/Sal, our school does not report rank either. I can’t imagine a college rejecting applicants because their high school does not rank its students.
My daughter’s public HS is part of a school system of 180k students that does not provide class rank. My son’s private HS does not either. At a recent college counseling session at his school, the counselor said that the single exception to the otherwise universal statement of “no colleges require class rank” are some of the military service academies. She said that they do something to address this with the academy(ies) when a student applies, although I admittedly wasn’t paying close attention since that path wouldn’t be applicable to either of my kids.
Our public school of 2,600 students also still include rank on the transcript. However, in our district, one uber competitive school has been no-ranking for a couple of years.
Exciting news for D24! She got ACT results yesterday and has a composite 34! This is her first time taking it and she has not taken the SAT. I think it’s awesome! She is considering retaking. She plans to apply ED1 to Tufts and I think this “clears the hurdle.” Tufts is obviously still a reach but I think the other parts of the application matter more than trying to get a 35. Thoughts?
34 is an excellent score and within range of Tufts. According to their website, the middle 50% ACT score was 33-35. So 34 is probably right at the 50% mark.
Tufts does super score the individual ACT sections.
They have a reputation of being need sensitive so full pay will help, although they meet 100% of need, but offer very few merit scholarships.
ED is probably the way to go since they also have a reputation of requiring strong demonstrated interest and yield protect (ie “Tufts syndrome”).
That is an excellent score! Congrats to her! S24 is retaking the SAT with a similar score just because. If she thinks that taking it with no stress may lead to a higher score, why not! Unclear if it will make a difference but if she is invested it seems like there is no harm.
I know at my kids large suburban school they say they don’t rank and do not publish rankings but they keep them. Our HS will give them to student or parent if it can help in scholarship applications or military service academy applications. My D18 was applying to Clemson which uses class rank for merit scholarship purposes if rank is available. I emailed the guidance counselor and he gave me my daughters class rank. She then included in her application somewhere.
My D18 got a 32 which she retook and got a 35. My D1 got a 35 and retook to try to get the 36 which would have gotten her a full ride to Bama. But alas she got a 35 again.
If she is willing to study and take it again. No harm in trying.
I think like @CFP noted below 34 is 50% range for Tufts so you can go decide either way. Having said that since she has taken only once and if she can do minimum effort and rety why not since most colleges superscore.
My S24 also has SAT score that is equivalent to a 34 on ACT and we were debating about it and right now thinking he may try the August SAT depending on how the summer goes.