<p>My son goes to a large, public, highly competitive HS. His rank is rather respectable. We are not counting on it to make any different. We expect that during the admissions process there will be a process of ‘leveling out’. Our students are told by admissions officials that they are judged not by the number of AP classes, but the number taken based on what was available to them. If you are in a smaller school and do not have many available to inflate your GPA, however take 90% available to you, that is weighted more heavily than a student that took twice as many AP classes but only took 40% of what was available to them. Their GPA may be higher, but they did not take the most rigorous schedule possible.<br>
There are also schools (GATech for one) that take all of your grades to a 4.0 scale (dropping any AP inflation), counting only core classes (Math, english, history, science, and foreign languages), they add .5pt for any AP/honors course and recalculate your GPA. I can’t imagine they are the only school that does this.
I guess what I am getting at is, regardless of how heavily the school shows they look at rank on the common data set, there is recalculation, and reorganizing of data to try to look at the students on a level field, understanding that they do not go to high school on a level field. Our students are hammered with this fact because of the Northern VA bias myth. Students from other parts of the state that are not as good ‘on paper’ often get admitted over NOVA students. This is because in NOVA the educational opportunities are so vast that the students are expected to do better. The admissions officers know the state and they know the schools. It is not a perfect system. Every year someone gets overlooked and your jaw drops, but there is a process to see who has taken advantage of every opportunity afforded them.</p>