Class Rank

Colleges & Universities Duke University
1

<p>For a school of Duke’s caliber, or even the lower Ivies for that matter, would the difference between rank 1 and 2 in your class make a significant difference in admissions? This is at an upper-mid level public school, with an approximate class size of 400.</p>

<p>I would assume that it wouldn’t be significant, and such a difference wouldn’t even knock you out of the top 1%, but I’m not sure how it compares to schools of that prestige. This is without regard to EC’s, hooks, and everything else that matters.</p>

2

<p>I think you answered your own question.Do you have another one?</p>

3

<p>As long as you’re in the top 1%, you’re fine.</p>

4

<p>Piggy backing off this question. Does not haave class rank in your school hurt you at all? Because I’ve heard that they weigh more heavily on your test scores (which mine aren’t horrible but much worse then what my class rank would be).</p>

5

<p>I’m confused…why would your test scores not match up to what your class rank “should” be?</p>

6

<p>Fewer than half the applicants to Duke have class rank included in their transcript. It is becoming a bogus statistic since so few schools provide hard numbers. Adcoms jump through hoops trying to estimate based on school profiles.</p>

7

<p>“As long as you’re in the top 1%, you’re fine.”</p>

<p>I suspect this is not universally true, since – in every single undergraduate application cycle – a considerable number/percentage of valedictorians are denied admission to Duke.</p>

8

<p>Well I just hope that my schools decision not to rank for my grade doesn’t hurt</p>

9

<p>Are you talking about SAT/ACT “test scores”?</p>

10

<p>

24% of vals are accepted at Brown, compared to 15% of sals. At Penn, the admit rates several years ago were 40% and 30%, respectively. (Nowadays that’d probably be about 20-25% and 15%, in line with Brown’s.) At Dartmouth, 30% of the incoming class with a ranking were vals, compared to only 10% that were sals. </p>

<p>Draw your own conclusions. Personally, I’m skeptical that differences in other aspects of their applications would account for such a significant difference in admit rates. I would not be at all surprised to learn students ranked #1 get a bump in admissions.</p>

11

<p>^ WOW. That’s an amazing stat. At my kids school the school rank is often gamed by kids who won’t take the hardest AP classes to protect their GPA. If colleges are really using this criteria, I think it’s dumb.</p>

12

<p>^^^ While it is possible to game the rankings by taking easier course loads there are some mitigating factors:</p>

<p>1) Weighted GPA: while this doesn’t completely address the issue and an A in an easy course is worth more than a B in an AP, it’s something to blunt the difference.</p>

<p>2) Course load and transcript: this is probably one of the most important things that adcoms will look at. As posters have mentioned above, many schools don’t rank students, and different schools will calculate GPAs differently. In the face of all that, a very direct way to assess an applicant is through strength of the courseload. A straight-A applicant who has little to no AP or honors courses just won’t stack up against someone who perhaps has a few B’s but took a lot of APs and honors courses because it will be very easy to differentiate them just by looking at their transcripts.</p>

<p>3) Teacher and counselor recommendations: sure a student may act to protect their GPA by taking easy courses but administrators and especially teachers aren’t stupid. They can see which students are pushing themselves and which ones are just coasting and it will be reflected in their letters. Combined with detailed school profiles that counselors usually submit, these gives a lot of information into the school environment and academic conduct of the applicants. </p>

<p>4) General considerations: top schools put a lot of thought into whether applicants can handle the academic challenges at the collegiate level. Not being able to put forward a convincing case that one can overcome these difficulties can be a mark against the applicant. One of the best ways for an applicant to demonstrate his/her abilities is to point to a body of work that can specifically show that they’ve taken college-level work and did well.</p>

<p>Finally, class ranking just isn’t a big factor in admissions. It’s a convenient statistic to throw around when boasting about how many valedictorians the university rejected just like USNWR rankings are convenient numbers to throw out to wow prospective students. But the implicit understanding is that there’s really no substance behind these numbers because they are terrible tools for making any sort of valid comparisons.</p>