<p>Hey I'm a sophomore. I'm not even sure if I'm interested in Columbia, but I was wondering....Would being ranked 10/350 at a somewhat competitive, parochial high school be competitive for the admission pool. I know with this rank anyone could have a chance, but is it <em>good</em> for a top 25 school? Or would it be an aspect of my application that needs to be made up for by other facets of my application, like SATs or ECs? Thanks for any input guys!</p>
<p>Ranking does not play that large of a role unless you're valedictorian, salutatorian, or outside the top 5%. And even if you're one of the two former, it's not the end-all-be-all of the application. If you're in slots 3-12 it really won't be too much of a difference. You're not going to get in only because of that. If you have something else going for you, it's good for the top 25. There's no mathematical formula, say, add an EC for every drop in rank, that could make up for your class rank.</p>
<p>The reason is because you have little control over it. Your rank is based on the overal strength of your class, not how you do personally. You can get straight A's and that's great. Someone else could have one extra A+ and be put ahead of you. Sometimes that's deserved, but it could also be due to extra credit or an easier teacher. Don't worry about it. As long as you keep up your grades, it's your business.</p>
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The reason is because you have little control over it. Your rank is based on the overal strength of your class, not how you do personally. You can get straight A's and that's great. Someone else could have one extra A+ and be put ahead of you. Sometimes that's deserved, but it could also be due to extra credit or an easier teacher. Don't worry about it. As long as you keep up your grades, it's your business.
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<p>This is absolutely wrong. You're being compared to your classmates if several (or a bunch) or you apply to Columbia. Class ranking, while not literally followed because it is subject to manipulation, allows the school to figure out who is good and who isn't.</p>
<p>woah wait first of all, does your school REPORT your numerical rank on your transcript? Or do they estimate it by percentiles? </p>
<p>Honestly, 10/350 is fine for any school. I can assure you that in some high schools (such as mine), the #10 kid is accepted to higher-ranked universities than the Valedictorian. This falls in line with the second part of your question. In cases like the one above, the reason why #10 beats #1 is almost always because of EC's, awards, ethnicity, something like that. </p>
<p>Ranking is important, but if you're in the top 5%, the differences between GPA's is small and stops giving the admissions officer information. So do as well as you can with that, aim for the top 5%. It puts you in the POSITION to be competitive - it doesn't itself make you competitive in the applicant pool. You basically put yourself in a subgroup of the total applicant pool, but for top universities, this subgroup is usually pretty sizeable and much much larger than the number of acceptances that will be given out.</p>
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In cases like the one above, the reason why #10 beats #1 is almost always because of EC's, awards, ethnicity, something like that.
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<p>Um, manytimes #1 is someone with an 1170 on the SAT.</p>
<p>yeah sure that works too</p>
<p>"yeah sure that works too"</p>
<p>Hahaha.</p>
<p>Regardless, rank within your high school is very important in deciding factors. Columbia2002 does have a point in refuting the "Don't worry about it. As long as you keep up your grades, it's your business" argument. The thing is, besides the top public/private high schools in the nation (schools like Exeter, Horace Mann, Harvard-Westlake do I need to list them all?), Columbia have very little clue of what your local high school (public or private) is like. So one way they measure this is through the rank in accordance with GPA. if the highest GPA in the class is ONLY a 3.7, it could signify that the classes are really hard (or something else). BUT BUT BUT, if the highest GPA is a 4.0 or 4.3 (hahaha), and you happen to rank in #5, then that's a different story. Hope that helps.</p>