@Shufflin, I made it into the Hotel school as well! Got my letter on Monday and two admissions officers called me the following day to say congrats. I cant wait to enroll!
My daughter's school did not "weight" grades for honors or AP classes but she chose to take them anyway and suffered a slightly lower rank than students with fewer AP's and honors classes, but she made the top 10 percent of her class anyway. The counselors at our school, as well as the admissions counselors told her "not to play the rank game." Instead they suggested taking the most challenging classes the school had to offer and if her rank was slightly lower because of this, not to worry. They also said that colleges will remove all "weights" placed on honors classes and recalculate GPA strictly on academic classes. Where the easier classes benefit you is in rank - my daughter used the easier classes as filler for this purpose so that she would end up in the top ten percent. Long story short - a girl who was ranked number 3 and took all easy "regents" classes did not get into Cornell. My daughter barely made the top 20 and did.
My school only does unweighted. However, I took the hardest course load possible, and ended up with a rank of 184/446. I got into pretty good schools at the end, so I guess it doesn't matter that much
I come from a competitive private school in California. I was in the top 15% of my class by the end of junior year and I'm ranked #18 out of 124 students. I got into ILR.
collegebound96, no offence or anything, but your hook (hispanic) is really top-notch. My school's make-up is roughly ~50% white, ~30% hispanic, and ~20% other. Despite so many many Hispanics in my grade, I do not see many Hispanics ranking even in the top 20%. Thus, in my racially biased point of view, you align decently well by your ethnicity. However, it still depends on the academic caliber of your school to truly get a good perspective on your academic competitiveness.
74% of applicants who apply are in the top 10% of their class. 94% of students accepted are in the top 10% of their class. If you don't have anything truly, truly, truly exceptional, you don't go to an exceptional school, and if you have no hook, you're gone right off the bat.
Thanks for the input. However, is this the data for the entire university? I'm not sure if these numbers would be the same for ILR and CALS (AEM)? Well maybe for AEM...also, I've heard schools recalculate class rank? This would be beneficial to me, as I have taken a very intense course load for my school. Others who have a higher rank then me have taken maybe 1 Honors or AP Class a year and all lower level classes. At my school, there is a huge difference between an Honors or AP vs a regular. Its not uncommon for students to get a 100 in a regular class if they've been introduced to the curriculum of an AP/Honor. The weighting system is really mediocre, from what I observed anyway.
Entire university. This criteria will be heavier in some schools than others - but all will care. If your school reports rank or deciles, they'll use that one that they give (but still recalculate when they consider... though your chances would be screwed if you're under the official top 10%). If your school doesn't necessarily report rank or deciles they'll recalculate.
