Unweighted GPA in determining rank?

Applying to College
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<p>Many schools take academic rank into account, either as part of a subjective wholesome evaluation of the application or as a part of an automated objective "score." Of course, rank is an important statistic because it demonstrates how well a student performs with respect to his or her peers in the same environment, be it a grade-inflated school or an extremely competitive and difficult school. A natural assumption would be that rank would be based off of weighted GPAs, because doing so would prevent students lacking advanced coursework from ranking higher than students with more difficult classes. If anything, a B in an AP class should mean more than an A from a regular class, but that's a different topic.</p>

<p>My school, meanwhile, ranks students based off of unweighted GPAs. I seriously am at a loss as to why this is the standard, but regardless, the inevitable result of having a very high number of students without difficult classes ranking high is present. Even though my true, "weighted rank" would probably be around 10-15/400, I am ranked a miserable 45/400 as an applicant to MIT, Caltech, and Stanford.</p>

<p>How do these schools, and other schools for that matter, take this into account? They can't possibly weight every student's GPA from that school and create a new rank for the applicant based off of that. Do they simply disregard rank in that case? Or do they use the provided (unfair) unweighted rank? Do I have a chance if I'm not in the top 10%?</p>

<p>To the best of my knowledge, there have been attempts to have our school rank by W, but all have failed... >:-(</p>

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<p>I'm in the same boat. Hooray for the art kids being ranked higher than me!!!</p>

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<p>Anyone know the answers to these questions?</p>

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<p>
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How do these schools, and other schools for that matter, take this into account? They can't possibly weight every student's GPA from that school and create a new rank for the applicant based off of that.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Actually... </p>

<p>While I don't create a new GPA and create a scheme for a weighted rank, I do examine the classes offered, assess your relative curricular rigor, and make an educated approximation of your performance with respect to the opportunities available to you. When a school offers a rank based on unweighted GPAs, it tends to matters much less (for the reasons you described). The exception being when a student is taking a tremendously rigorous courseload and can still manage an impressive rank - a feat made difficult in an unweighted rank environment. </p>

<p>Obviously I won't speak to the specifics of what any other school does, but we see enough transcripts to know how to make a fair evaluation if your rank doesn't properly indicate your abilities.</p>