<p>This whole class rank thing is pretty...well rank! I see many if not most private and religious schools no longer rank within the class. presumedly, because they have a smart homogeneous student body, and they don't want their students with an A- to be in the 50th decile? Do you think the admission guys can can a transcript of a school they are familiar with and place the gpa ranking in their head in a second?</p>
<p>Meanwhile at my competitive and large Public High School, that A-(3.75) puts you into the 15th maybe 20 percentile. There are tons of High honors and AP classes from the get go, so they can rank internally with a weighted system.</p>
<p>Can rank be a deal breaker? If the transcript shows you've taken the most challenging classes, and your GPA is strong (but not perfect) with a very strong weighted GPA, strong tests and overall application?</p>
<p>I see it's cited on most every school ranking "percentage of incoming class in 10th percentile or above: 80%" So I can see them trying to maintain those stats to look good for US news and Princeton review!</p>
<p>I think it should be abolished accross the board, if in many cases over half the applications they are receiving don't report it, why should anyone?</p>
<p>Rank is the only way to tell how you compare to the student body. Colleges have school profiles that go into whether it is a very strong school or a weak one or what.</p>
<p>i know a high school where the val has a 3.8 gpa because theres so much grade deflation, without ranking college admissions officers wouldn't know that a 3.8 was worth a lot at that high school</p>
<p>Well a 3.8 is worth a lot, if a college admissions officer needs a class rank to see that, then they probably shouldn't be in the college admissions.</p>
<p>High schools should only rank weighted GPAs. My high school ranks unweighted, so even though I have a 4.0 with 4 AP classes, 1 Honor class and 1 College-In-Highschool class, I'm ranked 1 with some kids who take the easiest classes and manage to get all A's.</p>
<p>If my highschool ranked weighted GPAs, I would be #4 but it would be more fair.</p>
<p>I'm from a pretty good public school (top 200 or so in the nation) and we don't rank at all, and it's probably because we don't weigh our GPAs at all</p>
<p>The colleges assign you a rank if your HS does not. The author of A is for Admission goes into great detail on this. If they know your school they have formulas that they use. If they don't the use the school profile and other info to guess. </p>
<p>Rank is of utmost importance when you look at the published data. It is indeed a dealbreaker for many. If you go to a typical HS, your rank if admitted at HYPSM is most likely to be top 2.</p>
<p>our school doesnt rank....but we have
9 stanford
7 princeton
3 brown
3 harvard
3 northwestern
1 columbia
1 MIT
1 west point
1 wash univ st louis
1 Cal Tech
and **** loads of UCLA and UCB (around 40+)
in a class of 500 students
so i think its safe to say universities know that our school is pretty competitive and good</p>
<p>What if your school is relatively new...like less than 10 years old? Not old enough to break into any top ranks or be familiar to adcoms, yet still possibly competitive...?</p>
<p>My school, aside from validictorian and salutatorian, ranks by percentile, weighted. I asked my guidance counselor just out of curiosity about rank and she said that if they did it numerically someone from a smaller school might have an advantage over someone from ours, so the percentile acts as an equalizer.</p>
<p>eh... what if you just happened to go to a "dumb" school? and you don't really know how you would compare if you went to a really good school? would they devalue your rank?</p>