<p>Missypie, we’re in the same situation. Daughter’s stats make her at/near top-of-the-pool at many very good small Midwest LACs (which, fortunately, is what she wants…ivies don’t appeal), so we are focusing on those with the best merit money.</p>
<p>just took a tour at georgetown last week. they said (if i remember correctly) that 40% of admitted students this year come from high schools that did NOT report class rank. of thee other 60%, the average admitted student was in the 96th percentile (top 4% of their high school class). hearing these numbers, i see an obvious disadvantage from coming from a ‘high achieving’ school that ranks students. if the top 50% of students at the high school are all A-students, the rank hurts all applicants who are not in the tippy top of the class. admitting someone with a lower class rank will bring the college’s stats down - that has to be a negative.</p>
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You are definitely right. I thought it went without saying that high school profiles explain the methodology for determining rank along with GPA. Both are done pretty creatively these days!</p>
<p>There’s a school out there that awards the #1 spot to any student who earns a GPA over 4.0. GPAs at the school are weighted and got up to 4.3 or 4.5. Every year, it seems as though they have 40+ valedictorians, something like 15% of the senior class.</p>
<p>Yeah, my HS did that back in the day…we had 16 vals in our large class, so they were about the top 2%.</p>
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<p>I heard the ad rep from Notre Dame mention the same thing - regarding large TX high schools. He told of an applicant who ranked #1 in her class - one of 70 #1s. Our local high school ranks creatively - amazing the percent of students in the top 10%! A goodly number of parents don’t quite realize that #12 in the class (along with 34 other #12s) actually makes the student around #150 (or lower) in a class of 800 students. One confused parent once mentioned that her son just got his class rank of #9. Her son was a good student but a class rank of #9 seemed a bit too high in her opinion. Someone explained the school’s ranking system to her - and she actually felt better as then the #9 ranking at least made sense. How do college admissions officers sort through all this!?!</p>
<p>I find the posts by missypie and 2boysima very interesting,as my DD was (is, but with the process almost complete, it seems like was) in the bottom half of the class at TJ.</p>
<p>TJ also does not rank, for many of the reasons people have discussed here. </p>
<p>As to the issues raised above about getting into the most elite colleges, including the most selective “public ivies” from an elite HS, all I can say is I hear you. To discuss it in more detail, PM me. </p>
<p>The good news, though, is that there are many private “new ivy” schools that very much value the smart, quirky, creative, passionate kids who make up the bottom half of the elite high schools. And yes, many of them have considerable merit aid to hand out. Parents of students in that position need to be more creative in their search for match schools, the kids need to put special effort into their essays, it helps to establish relationships with admissions officers, etc, etc. But yes, they CAN find schools that will work for them and appreciate them, I believe.</p>
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<p>Hmm…must be in a different part of Texas. (My HS school that did that was in Illinois.) Our two best local publics have stopped ranking altogether.</p>
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<p>He specifically mentioned TX in his example - but not where in TX. I read an article last spring about one of the 24 valedictorians at a top Houston public high school though - and I’m sure that wasn’t the only school around to have multiple valedictorians.</p>
<p>Confirmed - no set standards for the GC to use in checking the “most rigorous” box. Quote:</p>
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<p>I hope she means “mostly” in a loose manner… if she’s being literal, it requires 5 a year.</p>