That’s everywhere - where there is weighting. Weighting helps again for rigor.
If you’ve been the best you that you can be, that’s all that matters.
The colleges don’t have all this time to learn all the nuances of top 15, not top 15 - unless it’s stated by the school to them.
They want grades but also rigor. So yes high schools rank by weighted and top colleges will want to know that you took the most rigorous schedule you could have. If other kids took APs and you didn’t and it’s the same school, then yes you could fall.
Again, you’ll apply. Maybe you’ll get in - then great. If not, their loss. Someone elses’s gain.
Lots of things in life are worth worrying about. This isn’t one of those things. In fact the name of your college isn’t even necessarily important. Your experience will be and that can be great most anywhere.
Again, per NACAC less than half of schools rank and every year it’s less and less.
The colleges will understand your high school, your record and you just have to trust that it will work out. If you don’t have the most rigorous schedule vs what you could have taken, that will hurt you at some schools - but again your record is your record and how it’s interpreted is out of your control.
Control what you can. Applying to a balanced list and putting forth the strongest essay(s) and overall application - ie how you write your activities.
I understand your concern. My kid had a similar situation (4.0 uw), was ranked outside the top quartile due to the high school’s weighting system. Class size similar to yours. He was admitted to a top school.
You would need sufficient rigor in your core courses. I doubt rank will stand in your way.
They sent looking for a school announcement. Those named in the top 15 are able to include it on their applications. That’s likely the reason for the October announcement. Those not named in the top 15 apparently can’t disclose rank.
I don’t think this student should be perseverating, but he or she has covered these points previously.
I am sure that the high school does not notify 1,000+ schools of its top 15.
But it informs the top 15 in October so that those students can include that information on their applications. The OP is concerned with an AO seeing a different applicant from his or her school with this designation if s/he doesn’t have it, too.
I think OP is most concerned if she’s not top 15 and she may not be based on her last message of some take ApS to boost the weighting - or don’t take standard electives.
Rigor matters but it’s important to take electives of interest too. Mine took nutrition. Still got into fine schools. So I think it’s great if you pursued additional classes of interest and the colleges will too - even if standard.
OP will be fine.
Last I checked lots of Ivy kids work side by side with and for non Ivy kids.
It’s just soooo frustrating because I did take the most rigorous coursework my hs offered and allowed for my schedule. If my hs actually did rank it would show I was somewhere at the top of my class but obvs I can’t put that down since we’re unranked
Confused. Others took more rigorous to get a higher gpa.
But forgetting that - you are right, unless it’s validated, you can’t say it. Neither can anywhere else unless they’ve released it. If colleges required rank, their applicant list would be shrunken by more than half.
And it doesn’t matter.
That one data point, especially if unavailable, is not going to make a difference at schools that let in less than 5% of kids.
Channel your energy toward great ECs, a great test score, strong LORs and a great app.
I’m referring to people who don’t take electives, therefore boosting their averages (majority of the kids at my hs do this). I’ll probably just ask my counselor when I get back to school if the school profile states that they report the top 15 students or not…otherwise it doesn’t matter
it was the most rigorous in my case since all AP electives (there’s only 2) are offered once every 2-3 years due to lack of interest. I was never able to enroll in those courses due to this plus it never fit into my schedule. idk how colleges will view that since it was truly out of my control
University admissions will look at the actual courses that you have taken, and will look at the grades that you got in those courses. They are not looking for machines that churn out A’s in AP classes. They are looking for good students who take the classes that are appropriate for them, and who do well in those classes.
You might want to read the “applying sideways” blog on the MIT admissions web site. As I understand it, it recommends that you take the classes that make sense for you, participate in the ECs that make sense for you, and whatever you do, do it well. This is exactly the approach that my family has taken, and it has worked out for us. However, for the four of us what classes we took and what ECs we participated in were very different, and it has led us to eight different universities (one each for a bachelor’s degree, and a different one each for a graduate program), and only one of the eight was MIT. All of us ended up in well ranked graduate programs that were a good fit for us, but again these were (or are) very different graduate programs in a variety of different subjects.
To me it sounds like you are doing very well. You are however worrying about something that you cannot control. You really do not need to worry about this. This will work out. There are a lot of very good universities. As long as you keep your budget in mind, look for schools that are a good fit for you, and apply to a range of universities including at least one and preferably two solid safeties, you will do fine.
I might want to add that I got my master’s degree at a highly ranked university (Stanford) that has a very good program in my major. The other students in the same program had gotten their bachelor’s degrees from a huge range of other universities. Most of the students had come from schools that were not “top 20” schools. There was only one case that I knew of more than one student in my program who had come from the same undergraduate university, it was probably a coincidence, and it was not ranked in the top 50 in the US. Similar results will be true for a wide range of other graduate programs at a wide range of other top ranked schools.
For a bachelor’s degree, finding a good fit for you and sticking to your budget are the most important considerations.
And the system that the US uses for university admissions is indeed hard to understand and frustrating. Fortunately it works out just fine for the vast majority of strong students.
OP, I think you might really benefit from taking some time to watch a lot of this video, at least the initial part:
This is an example of a selective college processing an application, and I think the part where they process the transcript in light of the school report will help you understand why you should not actually be concerned about other students gaming their course selections to improve their school-reported rank.
For obvious reasons, colleges do not want to be gamed like that, and what they actually do with transcripts helps prevent it from happening.
