How much do colleges actually care about class rank?

higgins2013
Sat, 13 Apr 2013 08:56:33 +0000

There are a lot of private schools that don’t rank students. Our local public HS has also decided to eliminate rank, and has on average a dozen valedictorians each year.

When we toured Midwest LACs and talked to admin staff, it was clear that the HS itself was an important consideration, and HS’ strong reputation for “producing prepared students” was a significant help for its students’ college applications. Son’s HS’ Navigance data seems to confirm this, with certain high-profile schools accepting this HS’ students even with a lower GPA/score profile than College Guidebooks’ published median profile.