<p>Teachers at my school generally grade harshly and top students don't get straight A's like in most other schools. I have a combination of A's, A-'s, and B+'s but top 5% GPA in the school (which looks worse than a straight A student from a different school with the same percentile). Is my top 5% GPA a strength because of the percentile or a weakness because of my bad letter grades in an application to a top college like Harvard or MIT?</p>
<p>Yes, your rank is looked at carefully. Usually, your counselor (or someone else at your school) will send along a “school profile” which explains your high school’s grading system (among other things), so the colleges will understand being in the top 5% is great. Don’t worry</p>
<p>As long as you’re competitive in your school, you’ll be fine. The only exceptions are if everybody in your school sucks and you have a 3.0 or something, or your gpa is high but your rank is low.</p>
<p>sorry to add another question to this, but what if your school has similar grade deflation but doesn’t rank? how do the colleges know that your school is “hard”?</p>
<p>Colleges are very experienced at inferring rank based on information from HS (for instance using the top grade in the class).</p>