<p>One of the things I found out that colleges closely examine (especially places like MIT and Princeton) is class rank. I was curious how high my rank needs to be in order to satisfy the Adcoms (MIT especially). Everything else is great, in terms of class difficulty (accelerated), EC's and my relationships with teachers (meaning they'll be sure to write nice recs). Good SAT scores to.</p>
<p>Being that I am going to a top school (It has been ranked in the top 100), competition here is very high. So high, in fact, that my school waits until senior year to announce the rankings to reduce the competition. As a result, I do not know my ranking yet. I was curios, and was wondering what is considered a good rank? my class is 400 people, so if I am in the top 20 or 30, would that be alright?</p>
<p>It really depends on the school. Whereb was it ranked in the top 100? There are really only bogus high school rankings like Newsweek. If you gom to a truly top high school where over 25% fo to ivies every year and the average SAT is North of 1350, being 20 or 30 would make you viable at MIT. If your high school usually sends less than a dozen to top schools, that ranking won't be very competitive.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the Ivies really do take class rank into account. Below is a listing of class rank and the percentage accepted by rank from last years's accepted Freshman class at UPenn. The other Ivies and many top schools have similar profiles.</p>
<p>Rank .......................Percent Accepted
Valedictorian......................46%
Salutatorian.......................35%
Other Top Five Percent........23%
Second Five Percent............9%
Total Top Decile.................25%
Second Decile......................7%
Second Quintile....................4%
Third Quintile........................1%
Fourth Quintile......................0%
Fifth Quintile.........................0%
No Rank..............................21%
Incomplete Information...........0%</p>
<p>Well, Wall street Journal ranked my high school in the top 100, in the top 50. Our high school sends kids reguarly to great colleges. This year, we have 3 going to yale (just from early action), and last year we had like 5 or 6 go to columbia. Just to give you guys an idea</p>
<p>it not really a selling point, but its important</p>
<p>Since my high school is so competitive and strong, I can get away with being in only the top 20, where as in a mediocre school that would not be so hot</p>
<p>edit- I mean in the top 5 percent, where in my school thats the top 20</p>
<p>at my school, we "do not rank," but I know that I'm the saludatorian, so we obviously DO rank, but on all my apps my GC just wrote that I am top 5% with a GPA of 5.87, and she said she submitted a explanation of percentage breakdowns which said that the highest possible GPA is 5.90. </p>
<p>i don't know why they make this so hard. why can't schools just stick to exact ranks? what's the problem with precision?</p>
<p>According to MIT's Common</a> Data Set figures, 97% of those admitted were in the top 10% of their high school class. That's the most selective figure I could find.</p>
<p>That of course helps you basically none, because that says how many of the accepted were in that range, but nothing about how many of the applicants were. Sorry.</p>
<p>Ultimately MIT is going to look at fit over rank. If you're val or sal, that's probably a nice plus, but being in the 5th percentile vs. the 9th is probably not going to make a huge difference in your application.</p>