<p>My GPA is ~3.75-3.8
However, my class rank is about top 21%, since my high school is so competitive (my HS does not have UW GPA)</p>
<p>Which is more important? Rank or GPA?</p>
<p>5 bucks says you're from Nova...or in the suburbs near a larger city</p>
<p>this sort of works two ways..
rank can be more important sometimes because say the school grading scale is ridiculous, then a majority will have lower GPAs than a school with inflated GPAs...so if you're GPA is a 3.4 yet you're in the top 5%, the college will look into why your rank is so high with a low GPA (if you're school is straight up stupid, then im not sure what will happen haha) and they'll see the grades cause GPAs to be low, so they'll look more at rank
however, if you have a 3.9 but in the top 15%, they'll either a) see grade inflation, and rank will play more of an importance or b) see that the school is extremly competative (lots of AP/IBs, easy chances for added weights, high income area, ect) and will look at your GPA a bit more</p>
<p>ultimately, i still think GPA is more important, as they'll look into how your GPA is reached by your rank to determine a "true" GPA, so if theres a hard grading scale (as seen by low GPA + high rank) they'll take that into account, or if you're simply coming from a competative school (high GPA + low rank) they'll take that into consideration</p>
<p>Rank is more important...</p>
<p>At schools with insane grade inflation, there may be 50 kids with a 4.0 (it will say tied for 1st with 50 on app)</p>
<p>At schools like yours, 3.75 is very high</p>
<p>Who really got better grades, the 3.75 or the 4.0? Well, it's hard to tell...that's where they start looking at rank etc</p>
<p>I agree rank seems more important. For example at my public school in Anchorage (which has 12 NMS Semifinalists, including me) I am in the top 3 and I have a 4.182. But another school has kids in the 4.4s (they had 4 semifinalists). Rank is a better comparison between schools because GPA can differ so much school to school</p>
<p>It's not grade inflation though. My school sends approx 90% of students to university (mostly here in Switzerland - nope, not from NoVa ;)). The 10-ish % who go outside of Switzerland all go to places like La Sorbonne in Paris, U of Toronto, Tufts U, Oxford U in the UK, Brown U, or other very prestigious places.</p>
<p>It's not grade inflation, it's simply a very very competitive school.</p>
<p>Neither. Most top schools look at strength of curriculum attempted given what a school offers, not just GPA and Rank.</p>
<p>Rank -should- be more important, but I don't know if it is.</p>
<p>what idad said is basically true</p>
<p>They take everything into consideration</p>
<p>They want to see that you've taken difficult courses, they want you to get good grades in those courses. If you have a few bad grades but are still ranked highly, they'll check your school's average test scores. If the scores are low, they'll know your school is not competitive. If the scores are high, they'll know you attend a very competitive school where it is difficult to get perfect grades.</p>
<p>Everything matters, but in short--you don't need to worry about that slightly low GPA, as your rank at your competitive school will be considered more highly</p>
<p>GPA and rank can both be inaccurate; however when taking into account difficulty of schedule and school, they are equally important</p>
<p>whats it mean when rank is top 2.5 percent (10 out of 250) but UW GPA is only a 3.6?</p>
<p>a) harder grading scale
or
b) your school is dumb</p>
<p>bump
anyone else have any ideas/opinions?</p>
<p>depends on the school. Cal and UCLA don't consider rank since less than half of Calif public high schools even rank kids. Since approx 40% of kids at Stanford are from Calif, they consider rank, but not that much (since they don't have the data).</p>
<p>I have about a 3.6 GPA and I am ranked top 28% (not even sure I can say "top" anymore).</p>
<p>Super Competitive school with 750+ kids in my graduating class.</p>
<p>I am a senior at Tufts now. I graduated in the top 5% with a 3.6 WEIGHTED, doing full IB. I got into Tufts, Georgetown, Cornell, JHU, Northwestern, Dartmouth, Wellesley, and others. How you compare to your peers matters a lot more than your GPA because certain schools only grudgingly give out A's (like mine), whereas others give them out like candy, resulting in kids with crazy weighted GPAs like 6.0/4.0 and the like. As an addendum: our valedictorian graduated with a 3.8 WEIGHTED and is at Princeton now.</p>
<p>idad is right in that there are a number of factors. If you achieve high class rank while taking a less-than-rigorous course load, the course load will usually trump.</p>
<p>Having said that, when it comes to GPA, rank is more important because it puts GPA in perspective. It is so important some places, unfortunately, that my school district recently decided to drop class rank reporting. There is strong evidence that class rank was costing our students scholarship money, giving them a disadvantage when attending the colleges of their choice, and causing internal "rank games" among students that were detrimental to good education.</p>
<p>There is very strong anecdotal evidence, as well as some quantitative evidence, that dropping class rank reporting benefits kids from high performing high schools when it comes time to apply to colleges.</p>
<p>Hmm... This isn't great for me I guess.</p>
<p>It's a bit of a shame because it's not very fair. I take the hardest courseload my school offers. If I was in any other school in Geneva (I'm in the most difficult school where students are the highest achievers in the city) my rank would be at least top 10%.</p>
<p>Hmmm... My school did write a letter explaining that my school was the most competitive and most prestigious so I hope they'll take that into consideration :S</p>
<p>newfound:</p>
<p>Don't despair. Remember, I said class rank is taken in context. There are high schools in the US where 50%+ go on to very selective colleges. These US high schools are usually well known, but yours is probably well known, too.</p>
<p>Do you go to Le Rosey?</p>
<p>newfound,</p>
<p>Don't worry. I think that as a very gross generalization, it's true that class rank turns out to have more weight, <em>in more admissions cases</em> than GPA, but as several posters have pointed out, it's more complicated than that. I don't even think most admissions people at selective schools would think of these as independent numbers, one of which got more weight than the other.</p>
<p>As idad said, your GPA and rank will be read in light of the rigor of your schedule. They'll also consider the school profile to factor in how competitive is is. They'll "triangulate" your grades against standardized test scores, particularly if they have achievement test scores like ACT or SAT-IIs. Your recs can inform their reading of your grades--maybe your one C+ came from a teacher for whom that's a fantastic grade, or maybe you're graduating from a small school in a year when the mean GPA was much higher than normal. By the time they get done, they'll have a pretty good picture of you academically. Especially since your school sent some sort of letter explaining the profile, I think you'll be fine. Good luck!</p>