<p>I have historically found trouble trying to find answers to this question.</p>
<p>I have a 32 ACT (33 Superscore), 3.68 UW gpa, but 3.8 GPA. 21% percentile class rank in class of about 340. I took no honors courses freshman year, one honors course sophomore year. Junior year and Senior year I took/am taking 3 APs and 4 APs respectively with a few honors.</p>
<p>I've never gotten a C, my transcript usually has 3-5 A's and 4-2 B's every semester. I got my best grades Junior year, with 5 A's and 2 B's each semester. Junior year was also my most challenging year academically, I took 3 AP's.</p>
<p>Despite having gotten good grades fresh and soph year the classes were not weighted so my WGPA is low in comparison. Thus I have a 21% class rank.</p>
<p>Some of the schools I am applying to have large majorities of students in the top 10% of their graduating class. roughly 90% of the students admitted to WashU, Tufts, and Rice were in the top 10% of my class. Despite me having a reasonable ACT and GPA for admission to these schools, will having a mediocre class rank be a major reason for me being rejected? Seeing these numbers, it makes me wonder if it is worth my time to apply to these schools if my application will be thrown into the trash.</p>
<p>Your class rank is largely irrelevant, it’s your 3.68 UGPA that is the limiting factor, though you should give those schools a shot - just don’t expect miracles.</p>
<p>Alright - but suppose for other schools (don’t have the statistics/names on-hand) where I would have a UWgpa in 25-75% but maybe not an ideal class rank, it should not really matter?</p>
<p>Correct. If your stats fall within the 25-75% range, you should be fine (or at least a candidate) in most cases. It would be rather odd for a school to say everything looks great, but they can’t admit you because of your class rank. It just doesn’t work that way.</p>
<p>I think that class rankings are pretty meaningless, with possible exception of #1. Most elite prep schools do not rank at all. High schools all employ different standards in assigning rank. Do you really think a college will take #12 over #15, if #15’s SAT scores are several hundred points higher. . . or over #25, if #25 is an outstanding athlete. . . or over #40, if #40’s grandfather is a trustee with a building named after him? A student in the middle of his or her class at Bronx Science or Andover will be as competitive as the top students in many regular high schools. </p>
<p>p.s. In most competitive high schools, the differences between the top ten students’ GPAs and the next fifty students’ probably boil down to a single math test or science project during sophomore year, and all admissions committees understand that. </p>