School Not Ranking - Effect on College Admissions?

This discussion was created from comments split from: Care Packages!.

question for private school/boarding school families. I have a senior at a small boarding school… they do not rank because their class is very international and only 26 graduating seniors. They do not grade on a GPA … they use a 100 scale and the course rigor is far more than that of a public school. My son who scored a 32 and a 33 on ACT has only about an 88 … 89 average… so maybe a 3.4? That is not weighted as he takes a few AP classes as well. When applying to colleges and going up against public school GPAs I feel like my sons looks so much lower than these 4.5 GPAs that are posted on here. Anyone else see the same in their private schools? I worry about the schools my son wants to go to with that GPA…

@kristi4806 It probably would be best to start a new thread in this forum to get the most answers and opinions to your question. Colleges do factor in rigor when looking at GPAs. My kids’ school did not rank or calculate a GPA and there was very little grade inflation. Does your child’s school give you or your child access to Naviance which would show you how students at his school do in college admissions? This would also be a very good question for discussion with his college counselor.

My kids school does not rank either. They do calculate GPA and send a distribution chart as part of the school profile. Ask for the school profile to see how they present info. You might be able to see it if you have access to Naviance.

  1. Relative position among peers in his school is more important than the GPA in number. 2) Course rigor is looked closely by colleges. 3) “track record” is a reliable indicator where he may end up with his qualifications.

My home school ranked. I had one student and he was ranked #1. I think Admissions have to be flexible on schools that do not rank and moreover, schools that do not have grades whether they are home schools or small private schools

Our school doesn’t rank and it doesn’t send a GPA either. They do provide information about grades in their profile, which is good because they also tend to grade hard. From time to time (usually during junior year), some parents get a little anxious about this, and I think it CAN be a problem when kids are applying to schools that have huge applicant pools and tend to be more stats-based in their admissions. (Large publics, for example.) It can also be a problem if a kid is applying to a school that doesn’t know our school well.

The school, for its part, believes that it’s important for the adcoms to look at the applications in their totality. They should see for themselves whether the A was in in Physics or Orchestra, and decide, based on who the applicant is (prospective engineer or music major) how relevant it is. They don’t want kids making class choices based on the ranking system – (i.e., “I won’t take Latin even though i want to because it doesn’t have AP and it’ll lower my rank”). The school truly believes that each kid is special in his/her own way, and that reducing them to a number or rank is contradictory to that. Lastly, the school is selective to begin with and the curriculum is rigorous, so why make the kid who ends up in the bottom quartile in that environment-- perhaps while learning English or adjusting to a more demanding schedule, suffer even more for stretching him/herself. It sort of defeats what education is about.

So I guess what I’m saying is yes, in some places, it might count against you. In plenty of others, they’ll value the education your child received, knowing that the focus was the academics and not a class rank. I’ve struggled with this a bit myself, especially the year that I was reacquainting myself with the college landscape, but I’m thinking now that potentially being excluded from a few schools was probably a small price to pay for 4 years where education, rather than college admission, was the focus.

Lots of well-known schools don’t rank or calculate GPA’s (including GG’s school, Emma Willard); colleges are familiar with the scenario. As for the GPA thing, that’s partly to do with weighting as well (Emma doesn’t weight AP’s)… colleges are familiar with THAT scenario as well. The actual grades are sent to the colleges on the student’s transcript, so in a sense, the GPA is there, sans weighting of course, if any college cares to look that closely. But the GPA/Ranking game is a game, and so many factors go into it that it is not the be-all-and-end-all issue for colleges…

Many schools don’t rank these days. The school will send a school profile to colleges with your son’s transcript. Admissions people know that different schools have different grading policies.