<p>I go to a small (less than 100 students in each grade), and every year, kids in the top 25% go to respectable schools in the top 30 range.... </p>
<p>like Tufts, Carnegie Mellon, U of William and Mary, NYU, and Boston college.</p>
<p>I asked many of the aforementioned students and none of them had groundbreaking ECs or anything of their sort ... if anything they focused almost exclusively on ECs available within the school.</p>
<p>Seeing the consensus (chance threads) here, it seems as if being in the top quintile would exclude most students from any of those colleges. </p>
<p>Is my school an exception to the " CC rule ", that you have to be in the top 10% to go to a good college?</p>
<p>you don’t have to be in the top 10% to go to a good school. where did you get that idea?</p>
<p>Mostly from here. It seems as if “Oh man, if you’re in the top quintile it’s gonna be a long hard road ahead of you”</p>
<p>And by “good school” (I should’ve said “excellent” since good might be too low a word) I mean schools in the top 40 range, like Northwestern.</p>
<p>@Jarjarbinks23 That’s def not true. You don’t have to be in the top 10% to go to a good school. But your school is not an exception. </p>
<p>well, it’s not true at all, especially at super competitive high schools. My school doesn’t rank but colleges can compare us to each other and we send 20 kids to MIT every year…</p>
<p>Colleges look at applicants in context of their school, so there isn’t necessarily a rule that applies to every school.<br>
If an applicant comes from a large public high school that has a range of students, then being in the top 10% could be very important, especially since that 10% could be 70+ students at a large school. The colleges can also see the average test scores of any high school.</p>
<p>The numbers could be different for an applicant from a small rigorous private school, as those applicants might already be selected by admission criteria, like SSAT scores, or if not at admission, have evidence of being successful in rigorous classes. The average SAT scores at your school might be very high and the top 25% of your school might be very qualified for admission to top schools.</p>
<p>@guineagirl96 holy **** 20 kids to MIT every year? Is your HS a STEM (Science, Tech, Mathematics) intensive school?</p>
<p>@Jarjarbinks23 yes its a STEM magnet school.</p>
<p>Colleges can tell from the profile what kind of high school you attend. Certain schools, they know do not follow the same class rank patterns. Private schools, certain top publics (Winnetka, Scarsdale, Thomas Jefferson, some examples), special magnet schools all fall into that pattern. The upper 20% of kids may all be typical of the top 1-5% of most US high schools. The smaller schools, more selective schools, the ones that take more time and care in the app process recognize this.</p>
<p>last bump, would like a few more opinions</p>
<p>When talking about holistic colleges, no one type of question is enough to know why those others may have gotten an admit. You don’t need “groundbreaking” ECs to get into a top school. </p>
<p>Class rank is pretty meaningless in isolation. Many schools simply do not rank. Others do so on the basis of unweighted GPAs, and so the strongest students in terms of college prospects aren’t necessarily the highest-ranked. At some ultra-competitive high schools, the difference between students in the top 5% and those in the top 20% may come down to a tiny fraction of a point . . . or, in other words, a single math test sophomore year. Most colleges do not want to fill their freshman classes with students from just a handful of elite prep schools and specialized magnet high schools, although they could find enough qualified applicants from that pool to do so. Probably, the top tier of students at your school will all be qualified to go anywhere, and so other factors will come into play. You could be #33 in your class, but if you have some talents or accomplishments that #19 doesn’t have, they will provide you with a competitive advantage, since your GPAs are probably pretty similar. On the other hand, if #40 is a nationally-ranked athlete, or his/her grandfather has buildings named for him at a college, that will trump your higher class ranking. </p>
<p>Top 10% is important in general, but colleges know that it may not apply if the school is highly competitive (top 30% at New Trier or Thomas Jefferson HS for Science and Tech is seen as top 10% in another school for instance), they know some rural schools have small classes so top 10% and top 20% may be a small differencewhereas some schools have classes of 800 students so top 10% really is meaningful but at other schools with a class of 37 that’s completely meaningless for instance, some schools don’t weight rank (meaning kids with A’s in easy classes could have a higher rank than kids in honors/AP classes), etc. At some schools, such as in Texas and California, rank is very important: top 7% guarantees admission to UT Austin, top 10% guarantees admission to any public university in Texas or top 9% guarantees admission to the closest UC. In addition, many schools (including the most competitive) don’t rank…
If colleges are familiar with your school, they’re likely to know what academic quality “top 20%” means and act accordingly.
Finally, rank is seen broadly in admission: the “war” that may erupt between salutatorian and valedictorian at some HS is pointless from an adcom point of view.</p>
<p>If 25% go off to Top 30 colleges, I’d say there’s good guidance counseling in place. And if most of those kids focused on ECs within the hs, the school likely has an array of activities that adcoms like. Some hs, eg, facilitate far more than the usual French club and NHS. At one extreme, at some private hs, so many kids seem to have a carefully guided array of impact activities. </p>
<p>@guineagirl96 - how many kids per grade in your school?</p>
<p>@CHD2013 480 approx </p>
<p>PS cough cough my school has been mentioned in this thread cough cough</p>