For example, I’m thinking about applying to Stanford and I know that they look at class rank. I’m in the top 8% of my class (At a respectable IB school, not some dinky rural school in the middle of Montana). In terms of my GPA, I have a 4.0 (Yeah that’s right, a 4.0 gpa yet only in the top 8%. Told you it was a good school) So purely in terms of class rank, am I good, or is this going to hurt my application? Thanks!
A word of advice: it’s unbecoming to elevate yourself by putting down others.
I don’t understand your question. You are in the top 10% of your class, I don’t think they have a way of distinguishing the top 6 from the top 8%
For the great majority of schools there is nothing magic about “top 10%”. It’s just a convenient way of describing the students they select. Aside from a few outliers, some of them could probably say “top 6%”, or “top 4-1/2%”, and some could probably say “top 1%”, if it wasn’t for the obvious bad press it would generate.
Your 4.0 represents the highest you could attain at your school and your application will be evaluated on the basis of all the other things in it just like any other student.
That’s not really shocking at all…I go to a fairly average HS and most of the top 10% have 4.0s. And grade inflation means that the fact that your top students all have 4.0s doesn’t necessarily make your school good, or even the students good.
You can either report your exact rank or your decile on the common app. They’ll know you’re in the Top 10%
GMTplus7: You are right, that was pretty rude of me. I don’t mean to sound stuck up or anything like that and I can see how my question may have reflected that, so sorry about that
JustOneDad: OK so, correct me if I’m wrong, that means that as long as I have a good GPA, where I lie in the top 10% shouldn’t matter to much to a college (I hope this is in the context of highly ranked schools like HYPSM. Not saying that those are the only good schools, as there are many other schools that offer great educations, I’m just aiming as high as I possibly can).
It matters. Every little thing matters.
If you are not at or near the top of your class, it is unlikely your recommenders will be able to say you are a once in a career type student. These are the kind of recs that most successful applicants will have.
“Yeah that’s right, a 4.0 gpa yet only in the top 8%. Told you it was a good school”
This reflects badly on the school. They aren’t doing a good job of challenging their top students. Top private schools do not have this kind of result.
But colleges won’t hold that against you. The issue is how you’re going to distinguish yourself academically when the school isn’t allowing you to do that via grades. Teacher recs will come in significantly here.
In my D’s school, there are around 5% students graduated with GPA 4.0. Nevertheless, the main reason is due to the strange way they did in wGPA. They add a subgrade to all Honors and AP courses but still capped the maximal grade point as 4.0 for each class. Anyway, just saying what percentage of students get 4.0 GPA does not tell us anything about your school. We don’t even know if it is wGPA or uwGPA and how the GPA system work at your school.
"that means that as long as I have a good GPA, where I lie in the top 10% shouldn’t matter ".
If all 8% of you share the same 4.0. why is there any discussion about “where you lie”?
Unless there is other parameter used in your school rank, all GPA 4.0 should be tied for the top percentile. 3.99 may be the top 8 or 9%.
Often rank is based on weighted GPA
If the discrepancy is based on weighted grading then it is likely that the OP chose not to take entire series of courses that the rest of his schoolmates did take. That may very well be described as not taking the “most rigorous course of study available” and will come out in the wash when transcripts are evaluated.
OP, if the GPAs are all unweighted, then the top 8% have exactly the same GPA, and there is no differentiating between the students except by course rigor.
If you are one of the stars of your class you know it, and your GC rec will say it.
In my (limited, but non-negligible) experience, you don’t have to be #1 or 2 in your class to get into the tippy top schools, but in the very top group with a story to tell. That is where EC’s / personal achievements come in. For example, #9 in the class is at Yale, but has done [X] in a really interesting way and has been a stand-out at Y.