<p>people make it sound like West Point cares more about class rank than they do about GPA. is this true?</p>
<p>and if they do care about class rank more than GPA, what if your school is filled with alot of smart people?</p>
<p>If you look at the class profiles on the admissions site, you will see that GPA is not mentioned. Academic statistics are given for: Rank in High School Class, ACT scores, SAT scores, Academic Honors ( Val, Sal, NMS and NHS). Class rank is seen as a more objective measure than GPA since it measures the performance of a student against his/her peers, and flattens the effect of grade inflation/deflation specific to that school. Class rank can be misleading in highly competitive schools. This is normally covered in the high school profile that guidance counselors submit to the admissions departments.
I'm sure that GPA is taken into consideration too, but class rank seems to be given more weight.</p>
<p>I can tell you that at my school, anything less than a 3.0 GPA is in the second half at best. Top Ten percent is 4.25. AP and honor's classes count as 5 with an A and academic classes count the same in a normal 4.0 system. </p>
<p>Works to my advantage in my case, 21 of 648 with a 4.59 GPA, but even someone in the top half would be competitive.</p>
<p>O, and my deflated GPA is a 3.8.</p>
<p>my hs had no weighted gpa and only offered honors government and ap english. dang rural poorly funded schools ;)</p>
<p>RANK is the most important. And schools are weighted based on competitiveness (although I believe this is a subjective evaluation).</p>
<p>wats a decnt rank for wp?</p>
<p>depends on how competative your school is and what is offered. Generally the top 10% is ideal.</p>
<p>Looking at the class profiles:
For the class of 2009: 70% of cadets were in the top fifth of their class, 20% in the second fifth, 8% in the third fifth, 2% in the fourth fifth and 0% in the bottom fifth.
Similar stats are given for the class of 2008.</p>
<p>Of those 70% in the top fifth, I'll bet many were in the top 10%.</p>
<p>What about schools that don't rank? There are only 30-35 people in my junior class, so the top 10% is limited to 3 people, which is why my school doesn't rank. If they don't heavily consider GPA, and a school doesn't rank, then what do they look at?</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>West Point will ask your school to estimate your class rank. In any event, they balance a lot of different factors. Someone ranked 2 out of 35 may not look as strong a candidate as someone ranked 50 out of 800.</p>