<p>In your experiences, rank the admissions factors (GPA, SAT/ACT, class rank, ECs etc.) colleges look at in order of importance.</p>
<p>Feel free to use some, all, other or a mix of these factors in your ranking: SAT/ACT scores, cumulative GPA, class rank/percentile, reccomendations, SAT IIs, extracurriculars/leadership positions, community service, curriculum, race/ethnicity, legacy, location, religion, and work experience.</p>
<p>After researching a bunch schools (aka browsing through the college handbook) and reading their "getting in" section, this is the order I've come up with. Now, in your experiences, how would you rank them?</p>
<p>Depends on your target schools. Some schools dont even req test scores.
If you are talking about the selective schools, your order is fairly acurrate except I would swap 4 with 3. Having said that, the answer you are looking for is more complicated than that really - I know how we like our answer to be in one easy bite but reality seldom is. For example, your class rank is really influenced by your curriculum along with the overall competitiveness of the student body,isn't it ? Likewise your GPA is influenced by your course work and in turn by the no of honour classes your school offers. So everything is entertwined. I think one reasonable way is to look at your GPA first, and look at the supporting evidence of what that GPA represented. Was that GPA accomplished in highly competitive environment? Did the student take advantages of all the resources available to him/her? If the student is in an environment short on resources, how did the student shows his/her aspirations. So I think you left out one thing, the nature of your high school. Maybe that's why you put location in at #12. Then there's another approach favored by many schools that looks at native ability to provide solutions and grasp concepts as measured by standard test scores. It is easier to adminster and screen a large number of applications that way. In that case #1 and #2 may swap. </p>
<p>Finally in my experience with top 15 schools, trying to figure out the order of importance in the top 4 or 5 factors you listed is missing the point. I suppose you want to rank them so you can concentrate on the top factors at the expense of the others. At these schools you pretty much have to be firing on all cylinders and then luck to get in, because of overwhelming number of highly qualified applicants.</p>
<p>I'd also be wary of what you read in a college handbook. Unless it's a big state university no one is going to assign you points based on each part of your application and then admit/reject you based on the total. That's not really how it works.</p>
<p>It's about the 'whole picture', in which all of those factors play a role.</p>
<p>And I agree with yourworld, you do seem to kind of be missing the point.</p>
<p>It depends about every school. Check collegeboard.com at the school you are interested in, go to admission and you have there: very important, important and considered.</p>
<p>keep in mind it's almost impossible and futile to rank the importance of factors any more than it is to "rank" colleges. but there are probably "tiers" of importance; for isntance collegeboard uses "Very important" "important" etc etc on their evaluation and that's about as precise as anyone can get when it comes to hierarchically putting the above factors you stated. </p>
<p>it would make everyone's life a lot easier if someone knew what was the most important factor. adcom would have less work, you'd know exactly what to do. That the whole process is so stressful and nerve-warcking has to do with the fact that we simply do not know</p>
<p>i might just switch GPA with class rank. because your GPA really counts in the contex of what kind of school you're at. if you;ve got say a 3.8 and you're in the top 5, that's different from the same GPA at a grade-inflating school where you're in the top 50%
and a book that i have says minority status is mroe important than legacy in a lot fo places...hmm</p>