I’ve seen lots of different posts about this, and articles, all saying different, conflicting, and sometimes even opposite things about this topic. So I’m wondering what you all think.
How do top schools (such as MIT, Stanford, UPenn… etc) look at your class rank in relation to the status of your school? Here’s my problem. I go to a magnet school, ranked number one in my state as far as public schools go. We are known accross the state for being rigorous and hard to get into, and ranked top 50 in the country for highschools. Unfortunately for me, I had a pretty bad freshman year, and this has severely hurt my class rank. I am ranked 15/114 in my class, (just outside the top 10%), but I feel as though other things about my application make up for that. My SATs are pretty good, 800 in math, 740 CR, and this places me 3rd highest test score in my school, which isn’t a huge different than those who scored higher than me (literally 2 ppl made a 1550 and 1 made a 1560), and some of them are superscored, mine is all in one sitting. I still have a 4.0 GPA (UW, my school doesn’t weight), I have 5s on 4 APs, 4 on 1 AP. I am taking 2 additional AP courses this year, and 4 dual enrollment courses along with 1 more dual enrollment course I took in junior year. I won’t go on to list my ECs, but just assume they’re pretty decent. Plus I am a URM. But my question is will Admissions look at the status and competitiveness of my high school and discount my low class rank, or will my other academics make up for that low class rank? Or is there no hope for me, and will they barely consider me? No sugar coated answers please. Just tell me straight up how will they look at my low class rank in the context of my school?
I assume that most of the top schools are familiar with most of the top high schools because those top high schools turn out applicants every year.
A question though: if you had a tough freshman year and your school does not weight AP’s, then how can you have a 4.0?
@WISdad23 when I say I had a “bad freshman year”, I meant all my grades were low As. My school is competitive, so having straight As alone is barely enough to be in the 20th percentile. Freshman year I’d say my average in academic courses was about a 92, since then I’d say it ranges from a 96-98. However, another thing is applicants at my school get rejected a lot. Last year, only 4 students got into Ivies or equivalents. One girl got matched Brown through questbridge, one girl got into Penn, but she didn’t apply traditionally, she got in by an acting hook, another student got into Cornell, but he was another hook, for singing, then one girl, the salutatorian, got into John Hopkins. Everyone else was rejected everywhere, including the valedictorian, to schools like Yale and Duke. What do you think this says about my application?
I am no expert on admissions so really you shouldn’t listen to me. But “only 4” plus the other 3 = 7 people out of a class of 114 getting into Ivy league schools is about as good as it could get.
MIT and Stanford are almost impossible to get into statistically. Look at the results threads. ACT 36, GPA 4.0 = rejected. Even with impressive EC’s etc. There is alchemy in the acceptance process at top schools. There is no reason to despair or not apply, but like everyone else you need to have reasonable expectations with application to matches and safeties as well.
No, that’s four all together. But thanks fam, you made me feel less rattled. We’ll see my MIT decisions next week XDD @WISdad23