<p>and, i figured the whole time the newsweek rankings sucked, but i'm the top 10% of my class and have about the same attributes of all other college applicants in the country, i was also wondering if the school's ranking would give me the advantage over them</p>
<p>No, at TJ your GPA doesn't just get bumped up because you go to a more academically challenging school. They normally match students with accepted students from previous years. Whenever a new admissions director comes to a college it normally affects TJ acceptances to that school for the better/worse(Worse for Stanford this year). Also when they take kids from my school, even though everyone is really diverse(good at sports, academic teams, other interests, most excel at something unique) they look at TJ kids as the academic mold. You know how schools want diversity with sports,race,etc. but they also need some kids who are exceptional in academics or high on the academic number(even more so then the other kids.. like with ridiculous # of APs, Intel, etc. compared to other admits). These are the spots that TJ kids normally fill and that is why, on a purely academic point they normally get into schools where they are top 50% if not top 25%, or top 10% in the college.</p>