<p>Aside from your rank, does your HS GPA mean anything? Wont all colleges just create their own GPA by calculating in core academic subjects and leaving out the non-important ones?</p>
<p>It depends on the college. Most colleges do use their own, but your grades (which is what GPA represents) matter VERY much.</p>
<p>i know the grades matter but what about the grades in unimportant classes</p>
<p>All classes technically show your versatility.
But don’t fret. Colleges say that they look wholistically at your grades.
Eg, your Sophomore year GPA was a 3.0/4.0. Explain to them in your cover page that maybe your parents lost their job and you had to work 20 hours a week to get buy, etc. They’ll understand and maybe commend you for it.</p>
<p>Rank is what matters. Grades are meaningless without rank to put them into context. </p>
<p>If your school doesn’t rank, they have formulas to rank you.</p>
<p>You still have to get a passing grade no matter what class it is.</p>
<p>Rank can be skewed too, esp. if unweighted. Thus, the smartest kid might be low-ranked because of the circumstances of his or her school. There is no whole generalization. On the whole, rank is better, but it isn’t perfect im measuring academic preformance either.</p>
<p>Most colleges recalculate gpa according to their own standards. Typically, they do not include courses like gym, shop, chorus in the gpas they recalculate. They often weight honors, AP and IB classes. The schools less likely to do this are public universities, though many do weight AP, IB, honors classes.</p>
<p>The admission section of colleges’ web site may have details about how they recalculate gpa. If not, you may be able to get this info by e-mailing admissions or asking during an information session.</p>
<p>GPA typically is considered the most important factor in admission since high school gpa is the factor that best predicts college gpa. Factoring admission more heavily in class rank would be unwise because some high schools determine rank by using unweighted grades. Consequently, at such places, students who are taking the easiest courses – not even courses for college-bound students – could outrank students who are taking overloads of AP/IB and college courses.</p>
<p>In addition, there are public and private schools in which as many as 50 seniors may end up headed to places like HPYS, and all of the seniors end up going to college . There are other schools in which the majority of seniors don’t even go to college. </p>
<p>Clearly, basing admission mainly on class rank would be unwise because a high ranking student at a weak school would likely be far less capable than a lower ranking student at a school that is filled with academic superstars.</p>
<p>I’d say an interplay between GPA and rank is important. Like if your rank is weighted, there’s not much reason to look at the actual GPA, though the schools will be interested in what your specific grades for certain classes is. Anyway, don’t fret, generally you’re transcript will be evaluated fairly and justly.</p>
<p>I hate to play Devil’s advocate, but class rank, even within the GPA context means nothing for large state U’s…They only care about GPA that they calculate…</p>
<p>Smaller privates and other top schools care about both… BUT a strong rank will almost never trump a grade-deflated UW GPA…(unless it is Val or Sal)</p>
<p>Unfortunately, our HS has seen this first hand…Very strong ranks, extremely competitive rigor of classes, average GPA’s…Only top 10 kids admitted to top schools…(and that’s not top 10%; only 10 kids)</p>