Please understand…if you apply to an Ivy or similar school and do or don’t get accepted, you will never know why. But your class rank alone will likely not be the reason. There are acceptances and rejections to these schools with higher and lower class ranks…or from schools that don’t provide class rank.
You are actually obsessing about something over which you have zero control, and may not matter at all.
It is what it is…move on.
A vote for what I told you before.
Unless you are going to change your application strategy, it doesn’t matter!!!
Just ensure your list is balanced.
Put your focus on having a productive summer, writing a great essay(s) and move forth with your best effort.
As everyone has said, don’t worry. It really does work out.
The high school my d22 attended is an interesting case in point. They do rank, but it is purely on the basis of GPA with no weighting at all. This means that my kiddo who took math through calculus, five years of science, four of a foreign language, and a lot of extras but had two B+ grades ranked below kids who took the barest minimum with math only as far as geometry and no foreign language at all but had all As.
And you know, it did not harm her in the slightest. Even better, it helped the kids who ranked above her with less rigor. They were able to take advantage of a state scholarship program and attend college. (None of our state schools offer one of d22’s majors, so she wouldn’t have benefitted.)
Of the ten schools she applied to, she was accepted at 7, wait listed at 2, and rejected at 1. She’s happily entering her junior year at Barnard. Colleges are good at evaluating applications.
Exactly right.
We each need to do our best, and have confidence that this will work out one way or another. There are a LOT of very good universities. Any student who is academically strong enough to even think about whether or not they might be in the top 15 students in their high school, is also academically strong enough to get accepted to many very good universities.
“Top 20” universities are not safeties for anyone (possible exceptions might include Nobel Prize Winners, and straight A students who have won a major international competition and whose parent happens to be the head of state of a medium sized country). MIT and Stanford graduates routinely work alongside UNH and U.Mass and San Jose State graduates and in most cases no one cares where anyone got their degree. Graduates from universities that are not ranked in the top 50 will relatively often attend graduate programs at “top 20” or even “top 5” universities (and then graduate, get a job, and work alongside people who also graduated from a wide range of other schools).
You need to do your best, make sure that you apply to safeties, and try to relax.
There will be a very good university for you. Whether it is ranked in the top 20 by some arbitrary ranking organization (probably a magazine trying to sell more copies) none of us can predict.
Given that you are from New York, you have multiple very good in-state public universities. Anything else is like the cherry on the top of the cake – nice to have but neither necessary nor something that you can count on.
And as @tsbna44 has mentioned above, you also need to pay attention to your budget. Depending upon whether you qualify for need based financial aid, some schools are likely to cost north of $400,000 for four years by the time that you get your bachelor’s degree. Most students need to take their budget into account. Again, coming from a state with multiple very good in-state public schools can be helpful here.
And have faith. As long as you apply to safeties and keep your budget in mind and look for schools that are a good fit for you, this will work out one way or another.
So certain people are constantly trying to “crack the code” of Ivy/T20/whatever admissions, meaning in some way figuring out the “secret formula” that these colleges all use to score students, but refuse to tell us.
But there really is no “secret formula”, and we know this from both what AOs say and in fact what we learned in the Harvard litigation. Nonetheless, some people refuse to believe that and keep trying to figure it out.
As part of their endless effort to discover the secret formula, the people on that quest do things like look at various statistics and try to convert those into a formula. But very often all they are really looking at is a statistical correlation, not an actual example of a causal formula.
And I would gently suggest your observation about many (not all) Ivy admits being top 10% in their respective classes (among high schools that rank) is really just a correlation.
Again, we do know these colleges generally like their applicants to have challenged themselves across all the core areas, and to have gotten very good grades (some people sometimes say “near perfect” grades, which is one reasonable way of capturing their normal standards).
OK, so then people who do that are usually going to be top 10% in schools that rank. Meaning they’ll have the grades, and if necessary the weighting, they need to be top 10% in most cases.
But suppose that only 5% at some high school in some year have taken the courses and gotten the grades that these colleges are looking for. Do you think they will force themselves to consider 5% more who haven’t done that? Of course not.
But then suppose at some other high school in that same year, 15% have taken the courses and gotten the grades these colleges are looking for. Will they force themselves to cut 5% anyway?
This is really the same question, and very likely the answer is no. As long as you have taken the courses and gotten the grades they are looking for, they are very likely going to consider you. And if that is 5%, 10%, 15%, or whatever at a given HS in a given year, they won’t care, because why should they?
So like others, I really think you need to start focusing your energy and effort on the things that actually matter. If you obsess over these secret formula issues, you are very likely only going to be making yourself anxious for no good reason, and anxious people often do not perform optimally. In terms of academics, you know what you actually should be doing–challenge yourself across the core areas and do as well as you reasonably can.
And then you can apply and see what happens, like all the other kids who have done the same across all the many high schools where people will be applying to this same handful of schools.
We looked closely at this issue last year. One factor that came up was class size. I recall a general idea that for smaller class sizes like this, rank was less important.
Consider that perhaps this information might not be given to colleges during application season. This may be a graduation thing, or at least a second-semester senior year thing. It’s not as though the top 15 kids are listed in the School Profile. I would wonder if colleges have any idea about this. You might clarify this with your high school counselor. At any rate, look at the School Profile document that will be sent with your transcript, though often this will not be available until Aug/Sept senior year with the updated senior class data.
Good luck!
The OP stated above that the top 15 is announced in October.
Ok thank you.
I remain skeptical that colleges are looking at this top-15 announcement when they are considering apps from this school. Just speculating, but I imagine that, at most, one of the kids who is top-15 might have that mentioned in their counselor rec, but the converse, that a student was not in this top-15, would not be mentioned in the counselor rec since the school does not rank.
I think skeptical is too - giving it a chance they do . There’s no way there are - not with the # of schools. They have what they have - transcripts, counselor reports (if the counselor even writes anything about the kid), LORs, etc.
No way they are looking at a school announcement.
Many counselors put this information in their LoR and/or common app form, even if the school doesn’t formally publish rank. OP can ask their HS counselor how they handle this.
I agree AOs won’t look at a school announcement (unless it’s sent by the counselor), but depending on timing OP could mention their rank in their app.
If what OP what in post one is true, then they shouldn’t mention their rank or standing at all.
If the school doesn’t rank, the school doesn’t rank - and she shouldn’t let it bother her.
Reporting the top 15 is a form of ranking. If OP knows they are in the top 15 they should report that in the appropriate section of the app.
Counselors at many schools that say they don’t rank do share some type of rank info in their form/LoR/school profile so AOs can figure out where the student falls.
Lastly I can only speak to my school, but we stack up all applicants from each HS by GPA…this info is literally at our fingertips, with several years of historical info as well.
Yes - but that’s not a rank is all I was getting at…and it’s an if they know.
At my son’s school, they knew at year end - when they had the breakfast.
Agreed - the counselor will - it’s why the student should not focus here. They should let the counselor do their job.
I just worry that some kids will add contradictory info to the application to what their school states when they start guessing or estimating because they believe, they need a rank. I wouldn’t want anyone to get caught in a lie. So unless they have fact (that is published, etc.), I’d recommend my kids to avoid this.
Do you have any idea how this is handled with regard to CDS section C10? If a high school does not formally rank, but the counselor form notes ranking info, do the colleges record that as an official rank?
I know our high school counselor gives the student’s quartile in the form, although the School Profile explicitly states that the school “does not rank” (and then gives the quartile distribution). So, I’m very curious.
I expect different schools handle things differently. If a transcript doesn’t have rank, but the counselor reports rank or the school profile gives GPAs by decile for example, my school would record that…and I would expect others would as well.
There can be errors in what’s reported on the CDS as compared to how apps are read…CDSs are often filled out by institutional reporting and not admissions, so there can be bad info and/or a lack of communication happening.
Lastly, at my kids’ HS they do not report rank and try to obfuscate it as best as they can. Although the school profile gives a mid 50% range now, it used to report just the median…not sure why the change (maybe they wanted to cut back on the # AO calls?). Because…one of my kid’s counselors told me plenty of AOs call in asking for rank and the counselors do divulge that info (literally to the percentage) in that situation. It’s a curious world lol. This is a large public affluent HS where I would guess 80-90% of students go to top 10% schools (using 2800 4 year schools as the pool.)
I was looking at Georgetown’s data and wondering how they handle this situation, if anyone knows. Their handy report is broken down at top 5% and deciles, and then Unranked. If a student is, say, top quartile at a school that doesn’t rank, I wonder where that data point goes, with regard to a prospective student trying to estimate their chances. While obviously a reach for all, an Unranked student with high scores may have better odds than a lower (beyond top 5%) ranked student with high scores…thus the question.
(Edit, sorry this is not relevant for OP, who would be Unranked as far as I understand)
Thanks for sharing your first hand experience. It should be noted that beyond being a parent and long term valued CC participant @Mwfan1921 had been part of the admissions process at a competitive college.
Her insights are far more informed on these subjects than speculators and assumers such as me and other “mere” parents😀
That doesn’t mean this info is directly sent to all colleges.
I can’t answer about Gtown, but I would expect great variability in the reporting of rank and to the extent it’s discussed in admissions.
For example, I have no idea if the school where I read apps includes only the rank reported on transcripts in the CDS, or if they include the rank where counselors share that info and/or the school profile makes it apparent 
To get back to OP I would recommend they report if they make it to the top 15 and also talk with their counselor about how they report it on their forms/LoR/school profile. Other than that, I would encourage OP to not stress about the rank (as many other posters have also said).
It only bothers me because I actually do have really excellent grades (4.0 uw) but my school ranks by weighted averages so many kids take AP or less electives to boost their averages. This never worked out for me because it’s a small school so there are limited classes which made schedule changes impossible