<p>So I applied to a lot of top schools (Harvard, Stanford, Duke, Northwestern). I standardize test pretty well (2300+ on SAT I and 750 ish for the SAT II) and on APs and other general tests but my rank isn't very good. It's been hoveirng 15-20 out of 350. And I guess our school (public) is ok-competitive.</p>
<p>Will this be a major weakness on my application?</p>
<p>Oh...and my ECs are pretty average/standard (volunteering, leadership, science competitions).</p>
<p>Yea, top 10 percent is truly terrible. Hope you applied to safeties!</p>
<p>Beefs: although a top 10% rank is, yes, competitive, I understand the OP's concern...At our "public, ok-competitive" school, NOONE has been admitted to the type of schools he/she is applying to below the top 7-10 people for the last 4 years......Of course, without knowing UW GPA it's difficult to assess, but if OP's school has a history like ours, he/she may need to have a back-up plan (which I would imagine they do.....)</p>
<p>Puh-leez don't use terms like "terrible rank" for 20 out of 350. It makes people roll their eyes and not take your questions seriously. You could ask questions like, "Just how high does my class rank have to be to get into schools like Harvard, etc." and nobody will bite your head off.</p>
<p>To answer your question: Here is the generic answer to all "will this hurt me" questions: Your (less than perfect rank or scores; weak ECs; lack of national awards; etc.) will hurt you in comparison to others who have better grades, scores, ECs, etc.; whether it will prevent you from gaining admittance depends on whether your other qualifications make you more desirable than others competing for the same spots.</p>
<p>My impression aligns with rodney above. Our suburban high school with 500 graduates (250 to 4 yr. colleges, 225 to community colleges) sent 6 students to HYPSM. The prior year saw 5. That is top 1%. </p>
<p>I have gathered from reading hundreds of posts that the HYPSM type schools expect that a Public High School student should perform in the classroom in the top 1-2% of their class. One does not need to be Val or Sal, but very close. Decades of watching students perform at the HYPSM schools has taught the adcoms that below this level at Public reveals a lack of true passion and work ethic in the classroom (regardless of test scores). The requirement for very competitive private schools, depending of course on which school, would be top 10% or even 20% at the very most competitive privates.</p>
<p>"Decades of watching students perform at the HYPSM schools has taught the adcoms that below this level at Public reveals a lack of true passion and work ethic in the classroom (regardless of test scores)."</p>
<p>Not sure I necessarily agree with this assessment, nor do I think that can be assessed in terms of class rank at all.....I just think that this has become the so-called cut-off....In our high school, many of those between 5-10% rank could have easily been ranked higher if they had been assigned the "easier" teacher in a particular course or even had taken the easy road in terms of course selection(the difference in GPA's are easily in the tenths and hundredths)....In addition, in our case, we have had students transfer in from other "grade inflated" districts during soph or junior year and jump into the top ranks.....I personally think that class rank stinks; I have seen many students in other comparable schools without class rank have much more success with top 20 colleges....</p>
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I have gathered from reading hundreds of posts that the HYPSM type schools expect that a Public High School student should perform in the classroom in the top 1-2% of their class.
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<p>There are too many types of high schools for a broad statement like this to work. There are good publics, bad publics, public magnets with various emphases, vocational schools, charter schools, religious private schools (both good and bad) and secular private schools (both good and bad), and I'm sure that I have left something out. HYPSM have the resources to know about all these different types of schools (having interacted with MIT admissions officers a lot, I am always impressed at how many schools of different sorts they recognize by name), and are not going to evaluate these things simply as "Did this person go to a public school or a private school?"</p>
<p>Myself, I was in a competitive public magnet that had five different magnet programs - basically five small interconnected schools within one large one. We dropped class rank because it just wasn't valid to compare students with such different curricula. Had we ranked, I would have been near the bottom of the top 10%. I got into a bunch of top schools.</p>
<p>you're rank should be fine, i wouldn't sweat it</p>
<p>The opposite applies to my school, which, I guess, affirms the OP's post, because I go to a highly competitive public school of 1,700 (non-magnet, but nearly 99% go to higher education, with 96.7% going to a 4 year college) and we've gotten people in to HYPSMCBDC etc. even though the people are barely in the top 10%</p>
<p>NewEngSocSciMan,</p>
<p>Your post makes sense in the context of your school's 4 yr. college matriculation rate. Our local HS is 50% 4 yr. and 45% 2 yr. Your Public has stats more in line with elite private schools. I'm sure adcoms take this into account when evaluating each application from your school.</p>
<p>With the stats of our HS, 6 attend HYPSM and 2 more to Caltech and that's it for top 10. So we're running at 1.2% of the graduating class to Top 10. In that environment, which I take it is a little above the mean for public HS across the U.S., top 2% is required for serious consideration by these schools.</p>
<p>Don't sweat your class rank. It's fine</p>
<p>It's certainly not a deal breaker, with scores like that, I'd say that being 15 would be considerably better than 20. However, it is reasonable to be concerned. I am the lowest rank out of anyone I've talked to at Northwestern, with an 8/160 rank, and that's from a private college prep school, and almost half of the people were 1st or 2nd, but that varies from major to major. Most of the people I've talked to are engineers or doing premedical work.</p>
<p>My brother, with a lower SAT (2290) and class ranking (around 35/400) got into Stanford...it's not impossible.</p>