How important is class rank to MIT, Harvard and the other Ivies? I know MIT says class rank is not very important, however, I am a little bit skeptical about how “not important” it is. The main worry for me is that I will be taking math and physics with dual enrollment next year (Junior year), but according to my counselor, dual enrollment does not give the honor point. I am currently 9/413, however, that has a lot of potential to get worse considering its based on weighted gpa. Also, do the admissions officers have a way of knowing if dual enrollment impacted my class rank? It is not listed anywhere on my school’s website which means you actually have to talk to someone from the school in order to find out.
You might need to go outside and touch some grass if you think dropping from top 2% to top 3% is going to be the reason your application is rejected.
If the math and physics classes are beyond what is taught in your HS, then you would be well served taking them DE even if they don’t give an honors point.
Keep in mind that every year, both reject #1 ranks with 4.0/1600 stats while accepting others with lower stats.
Your school profile should explain the grading policies, but IMO you’re overthinking.
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I personally know of two kids who were #1 in their class and both didn’t get into their top 5 choices of school (they aren’t even HSYPM).
If it makes you feel better, being number 1 by itself won’t get you into MIT or Harvard.
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In my experience researching everything, class rank is the least important academic stat that they look at outside of schools that admit by it, like in Texas. Don’t worry about it that much.
Not true, MIT’s Common Data Set says Class Rank is “Considered”: Common Data Set 2022-23 — MIT Institutional Research
Yale’s CDS says it is “Very Important”: https://oir.yale.edu/sites/default/files/cds_yale_2022-2023_vf_10062023.pdf
Harvard’s CDS says “Not Considered”: https://oir.harvard.edu/files/huoir/files/harvard_cds_2021-2022.pdf
Research Common Data Set information for schools you will be applying to or considering, but do not dwell on it too much. Admissions officers look at your academic rigor and other things, in a context of your region, high school and so on.
My D23 took regular band class all four years of high school just because she was passionate about music and it was a big part of her high school life, regardless of the GPA impact. She ended up ranked 4th in her small public HS class of 250, but it did not stop her from getting into great schools, including several Ivies and Stanford. Do you thing and do it with passion, it will come through!
You are currently in the top 3 percent of your class and you say it will get worse. How much worse? If you stay within the top 5 percent it won’t matter at all that you are #20 vs. #9. If you stay within the top 10 percent it will matter very little if at all. If you fall below top 10 percent it will matter in varying degrees to different schools. But, in general, I think class rank is one of the least important factors.
The kid who got in from our school wasn’t even in the top 20% of the class. They were a legacy though. Sigh.
My two cents is this is an area where the CDS question doesn’t really match up with how highly selective colleges do admissions.
Based on a lot of reading of AO statements and other materials, on the one hand, these colleges largely do not care how your secondary school weights classes or ranks students.
On the other, they do care about context, and specifically with their unhooked applicants they are often looking for one of the top few students, maybe the top student, maybe the once in every few years sort of student, depending on the secondary school in question.
But to circle back, they are not particularly interested in how your secondary school ranks. They are going to evaluate all that on their own standards.
OK, so in practical terms, people sometimes seem to spend a lot of effort trying to game their own school’s weighting and ranking system, and that is probably at best wasted effort, and at worst might actually lead to you looking worse to these college than you could.
Nonetheless, realistically you should understand what they are typically looking for in terms of successful applicants from your school/type of school, and if unhooked you will need to be what they are typically looking for to be competitive. But that is in terms of how THEY evaluate and identify top students, not how your secondary school might.
OK, so in your case: it is good to challenge yourself as much as reasonably possible in Math and Sciences (including Physics). If for you that means going DE, fine, go DE. I am confident it will not matter to these colleges in the slightest whether or not your secondary school awards honors points for DE. If they see what your secondary school offers in Math and Physics, and understand you took those classes DE because those were the more challenging options for you, they will support that decision.
I’m not sure how important class rank is these days considering that many high schools do not rank anymore. Of course, in states where automatic admission is tied to class rank (like Texas) it is important, but at schools like HYPSM it is less so. That being said, top schools are looking for kids that are among the best in their year – once that bar has been crossed I don’t think specific rank is that important (i.e. #2 vs. #6).
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