“And over the course of the last six years or so in various jobs where I interacted with many admissions peeps, I have never heard any of them say a student reporting rank when the school doesn’t would be an issue.”
??? Is that because students dont do it? Or because adcoms dont care? Are you saying that it is not uncommon for a student to self- report a rank when the school does not provide a rank and there is no verification of the rank on the transcript? Id put that in the same category as majorly exaggerating an EC.
On a recent podcast with Dartmouth Admissions, the dean mentioned thst they would update their data on a student for their AI process if the GC letter said “we dont rank but if we did student would be #3”
This really surprized me that some HSs would do this. Seems dishonest to me…either you rank or you dont. You only rank for the students who know to ask for this?? For the students in the top 3?? Top 10%???
But you could ask your GC to include a line like that in their letter.
I think that a lot of high schools that don’t have public rankings still have unofficial rankings that GCs are aware of. GCs are able to tell colleges if students rank in a particular decile, and they probably know who’s in the top 5 or 10 and can reveal that information to colleges. The absence of public rankings mostly serves to reduce pressure among students and eliminate competition for the hundredth of a GPA point that can make the difference between 1st and 10th, or similar. It doesn’t mean that rankings simply don’t exist.
I don’t think it’s double-speak. GPAs are not kept secret, and GCs have access to all the GPAs. The elimination of rankings is intended to reduce cutthroat student competition for val/sal, etc. But that doesn’t mean the information doesn’t exist. I do think that, beyond the top few spots (how few depends on the school), GCs usually just reveal students’ rough ranking by the decile or so when the school doesn’t officially rank.
My kid’s HS does not rank. But the school system requires that a rank be included on transcripts. The school college counselor instructs students not to report rank. I asked her about this discrepancy, and she acknowledged that it’s inconsistent and weird; she also emailed one of the schools my kid is applying to to get their reaction to this weirdness, and their answer (after a lot of throat-clearing about how they don’t have cut-offs, etc.) was that if there’s a rank on the transcript, they’ll consider it, regardless of the school’s official ranking practice.
I share this mainly to say that I think there’s a ton of inconsistency across schools here, and I’m guessing AOs see everything and have the context to figure out how to evaluate the information they get.
Return focus to the OP, please. If someone wants to start a thread about different high school policies on ranking, high schools having secret rankings, etc, feel free
