Hi, I was having an issue with my school’s ranking system, and I was wondering if y’all think that it will be a disadvantage
to me when applying to colleges. At my school, only upperclassmen are allowed to take AP classes, and they are only allowed to take two per year. If they want to take more, they must petition to our school’s ADCOM. However the thing is, ADCOM’s decisions for these petitions are final, but they seem a bit arbitrary at times. For example, both my friend and I petitioned for four AP classes with the same exact reasons and basically the same format. However she was granted the four classes, and I was only granted three. Because of this, no matter what I do, her class ranking is going to be higher than mine. I have no chance of going ahead simply because of ADCOM’s decision, which they won’t elaborate on. This has happened to a lot of my classmates, and our school just now agrees that class ranking measures how much ADCOM likes that person instead of hard work and capability. Will colleges care about this? I don’t want to risk sounding too whiny or like I’m making excuses for my class rank. My friend and I both have straight A’s, so it’s not as if I’m a worse student than her. I know that depending on the college, class rank may or may not matter, but will this be a disadvantage to me and is there anything I can do?
In many ways, students are frustrated by their school’s system for making decisions. There will be rules that the group follows, but they are held closely. Students with an adverse decision consider the decision unfair and wonder if a decision was made arbitrarily. Students who are granted what they petitioned for are not similarly upset.
College ACs are often familiar with grading and other factors particular to feeder high schools. You and your friend who was approved for four classes are not as comparable as you believe. Those differences were undoubtedly discussed by the committee. I know what happened is disappointing and frustrating. However, it is not helpful to speculate about favoritism. The decision is made.
Your primary goal is doing as well as you can within the context of your school. When you apply to college, ACs will compare your profile to similar applicants and some will be admitted and some won’t. It happens, you never know why and there is no way to learn the basis of decisions. Not a great response, but there it is.
Actually, it was a great response. Thank you so much for responding. You’re absolutely right in that speculation isn’t helpful. I’m usually very fact-based and not so blameful, but I was feeling really frustrated about this. However, you’re absolutely right. There’s nothing I can do but do my best. College admissions can be somewhat of a crapshoot anyways. I just have to make myself noteworthy in some other way then.
Yes, you will be disadvantaged by factors out of your control. Life is not fair, and real or perceived unfairness is a source of much conflict.
Of course, policy decisions in institutions can affect both fairness and the perception of fairness.
In some states, factors like this can have financial consequences, so your school’s ADCOM should be able to justify how they have made their decision. For example, some states give a full tuition scholarship to Flagship State to both valedictorian and salutatorian, while other schools give automatic admission to the top ten percent of students, from all high schools in the state.
If you are in a state where something like this could affect you, you probably can appeal the ADCOM’s decision, by going to the school board, or perhaps your state board of education.
If the school is paying for AP exam fees, etc., then they probably should be careful about unfair expenditures for one student over another. If it were me, I would fight it for the sake of clarity for future students, and I would not care for a moment about seeming “whiny” where hundreds of thousands of dollars could be at stake.
Other than that, the difference between 1st and 2nd in class rank often does not matter to most colleges, but it could matter a lot for merit scholarships. Top colleges like to see class rank where it is available, but they mostly care about it from a percentile point of view.
That being said, be glad that you can call the other top student your friend. You will both end up doing very well in the college admissions arena.