<p>As a student at a large (for Vermont) public school, we have a wide range student ability levels in play at our high school. The dramatically different levels in course difficulty would seemingly lend itself naturally a weighted-grading system, but they have never allowed it. So instead, we have an incredibly top heavy bell-curve, with low and high level students all turning in at around an A average.</p>
<p>While I've always found this frustrating, it never impacted my application process until today, when I learned that despite having what would be a 3.89 unweighted GPA, I fall in the category of A-level students who have slipped outside of the first decile, even though our school doesn't "officially" rank.</p>
<p>What level of scrutiny are ranking systems given? I feel like the absence of a weighted ranking system has a profoundly negative impact on my application, as some schools (UPenn) appear to end the conversation if that's where you appear. My guidance counselor had told me that I had the application of an Ivy League candidate, but will those colleges see it the same way.</p>
<p>Hopefully someone here has been through a similar situation and has advice. Will colleges realize that if my grades were weighted, I would be easily in the top 5%? If they don't go through that effort on their own, what information should I try to get included in my school profile so that the situation is made more clear.</p>
<p>I’m in the same boat bro. My school does not do weighted GPAs. My unweighted GPA is a 3.92 (which is the highest in my class I believe…it’s a small high school though). Honestly dude I don’t think it matters. They’re going to see your challenging courses, and see your GPA. If you’re taking a bunch of AP’s/honors and pulling off a 3.8-4.0 UW GPA, obviously that’s fantastic. It’s not like they’re going to compare your UW GPA to someone’s Weighted GPA, because that wouldn’t make any sense. Your UW GPA is a 3.89, which is obviously going to be on par with the majority of Ivy League students.</p>
<p>Colleges take this into account. They ask what kind of a weighting system is used (if any) and if you have taken the most rigorous courses. Don’t worry.</p>
<p>OP - I’m in a similar situation, but from (probably) a much larger public school in Norcal. I’m dealing with it by counting on our flag ship state schools rather than the Ivies.</p>
<p>Every year only about 10-15 in our school go to the Ivies+.
That means may be 25-30 get admitted and those probably are
the ones with unweighted 4.0. There’s no way for us to tell exactly.
The problem is that the same people get admitted to multiple Ivies
and so they turn down so many admissions.</p>
<p>Luckily for us, 25-30% of our class go to UC Berkeley, UCLA,
or UCSD and a dozen or so to USC. It’s more realistic for us to
count on one of those admissions.</p>
<p>I’ll do the Ivy apps RD, but I’m not going to hang my hat on those. </p>
<p>Perhaps you have good public college choices such as UMich and UVA as well, if you’re looking for large colleges?</p>
<p>Using our public flagship as an example: admission to the Honor’s College is ultimately not affected for students from our city’s high schools, because the deans of the Honors College know what’s up here, and will accept appeals in reasonable cases. On the other hand, there is at least one merit scholarship that is automatic for given ACT scores and rank, and there are NO exceptions. If a student’s official rank does not fall in the top 10%, it does cost her/him thousands of dollars.</p>
<p>This town’s high schools include extremely strong students taking up to a dozen AP courses and the rest honors classes, and many other students taking NO AP or honor’s courses. Grades are unweighted, and rank is not adjusted.</p>
<p>When the University of Pennsylvania records class rank as 99% being top 10%, I can’t imagine they would make an exception for a class profile of UW GPA ranking…if you can, OP, get your GC to eliminate your class rank on your transcript, especially if you are planning to apply to Penn…(I would venture a guess that Penn’s ranked kids are actually closer to top 5% for that 99% but nobody has ever surveyed that high)</p>
<p>“On the other hand, there is at least one merit scholarship that is automatic for given ACT scores and rank, and there are NO exceptions.”
I can understand your point since we have similar scholarships locally (and the same issues). But the OP asked about admissions, not scholarships.</p>
<p>“if you can, OP, get your GC to eliminate your class rank on your transcript, especially if you are planning to apply to Penn”
Colleges are smart enough to ask for other info which they will use to infer rankings if none are provided (like highest and lowest GPA).</p>