<p>im a junior and i think i will possibly get a 95 on my averages. However ,a 95 is only to make me become in the top 10 % of my class? is that bad ? :<
anyway,do the college admission offices care more about the class rank or the GPA???????? </p>
<p>by the way, my school offers 2 really special programs that are called Classic institute and science institute which are focused on social studies and science respectively. and i am in NEITHER of them! will that hurt in my college application?? (((actually,in order to get in either of these,you need to do well when you are in middle school,but i came to US when i was a freshman,so i did not have a chance to get in )))</p>
<p>Class rank is usually more important than GPA because as was said before it gives better context for GPA. In some schools it may be very difficult for anyone to get an A, whereas at other schools getting below an A is unusual for a good student. Class rank compares a student to others at his school, and therefore provides a better picture of what his GPA really means.</p>
<p>class rank is more important???? i thought GPA is more important....... but still, is TOP 10 % acceptable to the great school such as cornell and NYU?</p>
<p>class rank isn't necessarily more important. if your school doesn't weight APs and honors higher than other classes, the college would focus more on your courseload and GPA.</p>
<p>Class rank also needs to be looked at in context with the rigor of curriculum. It is not uncommon in many public high schools in this part of the Hudson Valley for strong but not particularly ambitious students to take an easier courseload in order to get higher grades. Some schools will weight AP and Honors courses to recalculate GPA in order to rank. Many rank unweighted averages, however. The result is that very often a student who ends up with a 98 average in Regents level (basic college prep) classes gets ranked ahead of a kid with a 96 or 97 average who has loaded up on Honors and AP classes. Colleges should be able to figure this out if the High School Profile is well written and transparent, but I have seen some pretty bad Profiles. I am not a fan of individual class ranking for this reason and would prefer to see students ranked by decile. The current system often penalizes students who seek an intellectual challenge and reward those who would rather apply their intellect to game the system.</p>
<p>They look at GPA in the context of class rank. A 4.0 at one school may be #1 but at another you might only be in the top 25%. </p>
<p>I think that not being in either of those institutes will hurt you. I'm guessing that they offer more rigorous curriculum in those subjects, and if you don't take the hardest course load you can you're at a disadvantage.</p>
<p>Certainly both GPA and class rank matter. My impression from talking to admissions officers at a number of selective schools that we have visited is that being in the top 10% is important regardless of how competitive the HS is. D has a 3.95/4.95 w/ 6 APs and 7 honors classes through junior year. Taking 6 more this year and she is clawing to stay inside that top decile at her NC high school. We don't talk about it, but I expect, and she is probably aware, that a single B this year would probably drop her outside the top 10%. </p>
<p>It's a different world. I took what was considered a rigorous schedule in in HS (OK, so 30 years ago) , and she is at least two two years ahead of where I was. Kids today ...</p>
<p>Use your collegeboard profile and the "Academic Tracker". Plug in your classes and stats, ie. SAT/ACT scores and GPA.</p>
<p>If you store all of that info and then pull over the schools that you are intersted in and click on "how do I stack up", it will not only put your stats into a graph for that school, but you can also click on "how important is this" for each school to see what they look for the most. </p>
<p>Hope this helps. This tool is incredibly helpful. Good Luck :)</p>
<p>Don't colleges try to figure a rank for you? Doesn't the guidance counselor put something in their report to a college about where a student would be (Top 10/20/30%)?</p>
<p>Yes, it is sometimes stated on the transcript. In my son's case, he is rated #13, but still only in the top 10% because there are only 220 seniors in his class.</p>
<p>I think we're not giving colleges enough credit. A lot of regional admissions officers will know your particular schools pretty well. At my school, even though a 3.2 is top 10% and we don't rank... we still have decent results from the admissions process. I think that the admissions officers have a pretty good idea of how rigorous your school is, of the grading scale your school uses, and of the students that your school produces.</p>
<p>they are both equally important, but in most cases the recalculated GPA is more reliable than class rank because people can take easy classes and have a higher rank.</p>
<p>Regional admissions officers? Can you explain please, as our school is in SoCal and most of the colleges that our kids want to go to are back East.</p>
<p>A lot of schools (particulary private ones) have regional admissions officers that read applications from a certain geographic area or type of school. These officers know a lot more detail about specific schools and areas than the other officers and will sometimes represent you in committee.</p>