<p>No ranking system is perfect. Ranks calculated with all grades unweighted fail to account for differences in strength of the curriculum. Ranks based on weighted grades are always going to be subject to the kind of problem noted by the OP. My D, now a college sophomore, took four semesters of an afterschool drama class in high school that each counted as an unweighted "A"; in her huge public school, these four extra unweighted A's dragged her GPA down enough to drop her from first to fifth (she knew that her GPA would have been higher than the valedictorian's without those four extra classes). This was the case, even though the school calculated an academic vs. overall rank; the reason was that the drama classes were considered college prep (since satisfying the University of California's a-g requirement) and hence part of academic rank! My S, currently a junior, knows several students this year who purposely are taking only 5 classes (in a six-period) day just to avoid taking any non-honors classes, since no honors or AP classes are offered at the school sixth period. I would think that admissions officers at elite schools are well aware of the vagaries of rank, and are sensitve both to the impact extra enrichment courses have on class rank and to the games some students play in order to keep their ranks high (remember Blair Hornstine?) My daughter would certainly not have written a note explaining why she was not number one in the class, though I can see the OP doing such a thing for as radical an impact as those extra classes apparently had on his/her rank.</p>