<p>How much importance is given to class rank? Will it matter greatly if you are in top 10 vs top 12-13? Also do they go by top X or top X %? for e.g the class size can be 90 or 110.</p>
<p>Val and sal are obviously important. Beyond that it matters a good bit how large the class is. In a class of 40 or even 90, individual rank placement matters more and in a class of 500 or 750 percentile matters more.</p>
<p>It matters quite a bit even if your school doesn’t rank. Your GC will check off a box on your LOR - top 1%, 5%, 10%… If you are aiming for top tier schools, you want your GC to check off 1 or 5%. When you have a small class size, it can be more challenging. My kid was the Sal and her class happened to have 180 students that year, so she just made the top 1%. It was a discussion we had with her GC.</p>
<p>Oldfort, how does the GC make the determination if the school doesn’t rank?</p>
<p>For schools that don’t rank, the GC generally does not check any of the boxes and indicates elsewhere in the report that no ranking is done by the school.</p>
<p>right because there are many people that are ranked high in their class yet get average act score… i’m like a 39 in a class of 400 something and I got a 31 on both reading and english. the top 1 in my school actually got a 21 on his act. its like :/</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/05/education/05rank.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/05/education/05rank.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0</a></p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The article is 5 years old, so I imagine today more than half of high schools no longer provide ranking or have guidance counselor’s check those boxes on the Secondary School Report (SSR). </p>
<p>That said, when a high school does not provide rank, a college can simply put all the applications it receives from each high school in GPA order to determine ranking.</p>
<p>Our school GC doesn’t put down any indication about the ranking due to the county policy. I was told by our HS that colleges know our school well, so if they see straight A and extremely high weighted GPA from our school, along with the box that GC will check about the rigor of the course load, they would figure out the competitiveness of the kid in our school.</p>
<p>Even when a HS does not rank, the college would have some idea how do you rank among other applicants from the same school of the same year and from previous years.</p>
<p>My son has a 3.83 GPA and a rank of 22%. His weighted GPA is 4.18, but that isnt used for ranking. </p>
<p>In his situation I dont know what a rank of 22% really tells the college. I would prefer his high school didnt rank (or ranked with a weighted number).</p>
<p>^ Age old discussion Mitch. Students taking challenging classes would rather use weighted GPA, others would not.</p>
<p>As far as importance of class ranking, look at the Common Data Set of the colleges in which you are interested, section C7. It will show the ranking of class rank and other admission factors. At a school like U Texas, class rank is king. At others like WVU, it is not considered at all.</p>
<p>Rank only makes sense when everyone takes the same courses - once you have one kid in Calc III and another kid in Algebra II senior year, comparing their rank means absolutely nothing to colleges. Throw in weighting, and you get kids chasing easy honors and AP classes for the extra GPA points, plus the pressure to always ratchet up the grades in those classes. Don’t weight, and some kids will dodge the tough classes to maintain high ranking. Quite frankly, I’m glad to see it go away, because the downside vastly exceeds any upside. Colleges can spot the good kids without having a number attached to them.</p>
<p>I’ve been opposed to class rank ever since my HS salutatorian was a flute playing stoner who never took a math class beyond Geometry, yet had a 4.0.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Dunno what it tells the college, but it tells me that you HS has massive grade inflation. (At our public, a 3.8 uw might be top quintile.)</p>
<p>So in your son’s case, mitch, rank will be a major determining factor at all highly selective schools (which pride themselves on accepting top decile students).</p>
<p>
Not true. They don’t rank each student by number, but they do indicate what percentile a student is. My kids went to 2 different private schools and both of them didn’t rank, but they still checked off how the student ranked within each category.</p>
<p>Academic achievement
Extracurricular accomplishments
Personal qualities and character
Overall</p>
<p>They are ranked Below Average, Average…Top 10%, Top 5% and Top 1%</p>
<p>This is not ranking, but it is one of the most important piece of information from your GC’s LOR. If your school doesn’t rank, ask your GC beforehand how he/she is going to check off those boxes. When it comes to their writeup, it’s yada, yada, yada.</p>
<p>^^ Severl years ago, when my kids applied to college fom Stuyvesant High School, the guidance counselor filled out all “color” questions by drawing a big ‘X’ through the entire paragraph with an N/A. She did this for all 940 students. Even though the SSR asks GC’s for this information, if a HS doesn’t rank, they will usually not fill in that information.</p>
<p>If your school doesn’t rank and you are in top 12, can you ask GC to check the nearest box which is top 10%? </p>
<p>other pertinent query: Can you ask your GC for the school report He/she will be submitting to colleges so you know what is on there?</p>
<p>^^ The answer will vary from GC to GC and from school to school.</p>
<p>At my son and daughter’s high school, the College Office/GC’s refused to check boxes for any students, as they felt that ranking and checking boxes only helped the tippy top students – and their job was to get EVERY student into a great college, not just students at the high end. And it worked – over half the class (450+ kids) are admitted to the ivies and little ivies every year. So not providing ranking or checking boxes seems to help more students, at least at their HS.</p>
<p>You could certainly ask your GC to see the form. Whether or not they will show it to you is another matter. My kid’s HS had a college application prep meeting for parents where a sample SSR was put up on the screen for all to see how the form was completed by the College Office.</p>
<p>By not checking those boxes, some state schools’ honors program may automatically disqualify you. We had a discussion with D2’s GC on how she was going to check off those boxes.</p>
<p>I guess it varies from state to state. In New York State, it didn’t seem to matter for Macaulay Honors Colleges and the like which provide free tuition, room, board and a computer to top scholars.</p>
<p>I know Rutgers did. Their computer program did the selection based on an applicant’s ranking.</p>