<p>@collegemom2son </p>
<p>As I understand it, most if not virtually all high schools track where a student falls in their class, even if they don’t choose to share those stats with students and parents. Because they do report it on the GC form that goes to every college to which they apply. Otherwise the college would have no ability to gauge what a 3.85 really means at that school. So I think that is how Tulane would know if that student is in the top 5%, 10%, etc. I suppose if they didn’t have that stat and really wanted to know about a certain student, Tulane would call that GC.</p>
<p>@Sally_Rubenstone has more knowledge regarding this aspect than I do, and perhaps she wouldn’t mind weighing in what her experience has been.</p>
<p>Some high schools do have what I call “stealth ranks,” which I feel are the worst of all worlds. That is, they assign a rank to a student (well, more commonly, they assign a decile or quintile) and will report it to colleges but not to the student or parents. But there are actually many high schools (my own son’s among them) that do not compute rank or deciles but are willing to give colleges an approximate sense of where the student falls in the class, if the college requires it for merit-scholarship purposes. But if the high school doesn’t weight grades either (and my son’s doesn’t), then the high school is quick to point out to the colleges that they really can’t compute deciles or quintiles with any accuracy because the student with a, say, 3.7 GPA who is in mostly AP and honors classes shouldn’t be compared to a student who has taken nothing rigorous at all who has the same GPA. </p>
<p>Note also that most college admission offices track applicants from the same high school for a period of 5 years or so. Thus, even if the school doesn’t provide a rank, the admission staff members are likely to look through their records and say, “Alex here has a 3.8 GPA. Most of our past applicants from this high school have had 3.7 or below.” It doesn’t show them where this particular student fits into his or her high school class but it DOES offer a sense of where the student fits in their own applicant trend. </p>
<p>In any case, evaluating students from diverse high schools is far from an exact science and inevitably results in many apples vs. oranges comparisons, as much as the admission folks try to make it otherwise.</p>
<p>The Admissions Counselor had strongly recommended that he apply for the PTA. I had tried to advise my son that chances were remote since he had not been awarded merit scholarships to begin with. He wants to go, so he’s trying all angles, but I truly wish the Admissions Counselor had been less enthusiastic about this as it’s just going to be a hurtful rejection. They simply held out false hope, and I think it is very insensitive of them. </p>
<p>I will start a new thread as I didn’t make my question clear and don’t want to hijack Newtownunit’s thread.</p>
<p>@Newtownunit Congrats to your son on getting into Tulane. I hope it works out for you! </p>
<p>Thanks. I went undergrad and law school there so I’m hopeful they put something together in the end that helps, but I think the prevailing wisdom has to be that you shouldn’t be taking out significant loans to go to a private institution. We should hear from Florida State late tonight though, and that MY top choice. </p>
<p>Good news. My son got into FSU, and got an out of state tuition waiver. Now Tulane is suddenly interested in what he was awarded, so perhaps there will be a bit of a back and forth. </p>