I have not taken the SAT yet but am planning to in October, and I work at a science summer camp, have an internship at WHOI, did club swimming at a high level for 3 years, and have been play classical piano since I was 6 and now teach free lessons at school. I also am a Naval Horizons essay winner this year and have won a few honorable mentions in piano competitions. I am worried about my class rank lowering my chances into top colleges since my school only shows the percent and not the exact number. I was wondering where I should aim for.
Most schools don’t rank.
Many only show “top decile”, “top 20%”.
The way colleges treat top 10% vs. Top 20% depends on the type of school you’re attending.
Is your school highly competitive (ie., IB is selective and/or has an average score of 32) and 4.0 reflects the competition… or is your school a magnet within a Title I or struggling environment, with 4.0 reflecting lack of competition?
Is your school a “known quantity”, ie. , well-known to adcoms?
A key element to any college list:
Budget
Run the NPC on your state’s flagships and your favorite private college. You may need your parents’ help. (You need to do this for each college since each calculates differently). Can your parents afford the amount each college shows under “net price”?
Unfortunately, the answer is often “no they can’t” and students have to target universities where they’ll get merit scholarships.
Are you a rising junior or a rising senior?
You should change your username. This link tells you how.
Control what you can. Being the best you.
You don’t need to panic about things you can’t control. Life is long. If you do your best, things will work out fine.
By the way attending one school doesn’t ensure success while another doesn’t ensure failure. Both Harvard and Hofstra will produce multi millionaires. And food servers (and there’s nothing wrong with this job btw).
Good luck
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How are you only top 20% if you have a 4.0 gpa? You can’t do better than 4.0 so how are so many ahead of you? How does your school figure ranking? Is that 4.0 a weighted gpa?
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My question as well. Is this a weighted GPA? If so…what is your unweighted GPA?
I am a rising senior and my school is ranked #5 in Massachusetts.
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This is unweighted but my school goes to 4.3.
I can guess what school you go to and you are in a unique situation due to the IB for all format. You should have access to Naviance (or a similar program) soon and you will be able to better predict outcomes for various schools. The person who can best answer this question is your guidance counselor.
But the question you have to ask yourself is what qualifies as a “good school”. I know lots of kids that have graduated from the #4 school in MA which is also a charter with a specialized focus that puts them outside the norm. They’ve all gone to the right school for them. There are not a ton of kids attending Ivies/ T20, partly because people choose to go places that are a better fit academically/socially/financially and partly because those schools are a reach even for those with a 4.0 and perfect SAT/ACTs.
For now, focus on doing well and creating a list of academic/financial likelies. Everyone knows what the academic reaches are so that won’t take as much research. Build your list on likelies that you’d be happy to attend and then throw in a couple of reaches based on how strong they are in your intended major for a well rounded list.
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Does the IB for all format hurt my application?
It doesn’t hurt your application, but it’s outside the norm, so you should only be comparing to others from your school, which is why you need to use Naviance and your guidance counselor to get the most accurate assessment.
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No and preparing the IB Diploma at a top public or charter school that’s a known quantity probably makes your rank irrelevant as long as you dont apply just to the same 5 colleges everyone in the top quarter applies to.
With this level of academic competition, you will be assumed to be well-prepared with maximum rigor. The difference will be essays and ECs.
Diversify your list&include colleges from other regions: the mid Atlantic, South, Midwest in addition to East Coast/New England.
Run the NPCs first.
You should already be working on the CommonApp and writing essays, with UMass Amherst/UMass Lowell/Clark honors supplements completed and ready to sent.
Don’t waste time on what you can’t control, focus on the parts of the application that you can control.
I would suggest running the NPC on SUNY Binghamton.
Do you have a predicted score?
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My teachers have not revealed my expected grades yet. Do you think the ECs I listed are strong?
Two things that are very important for someone who is going into their senior year of high school. First find out what your budget is for a full 4 years of university. Also find out what your budget is without taking on any debt. The second thing is to pick out at least one and preferably two safeties. A safety is a university that you know you will be admitted to, you know you will be able to afford, that has a decent program in your intended major or likely majors, and you would be willing to attend.
Once you have picked out two safeties, then we can speculate about your chances at highly ranked and selective universities.
I did not notice your intended major. I did notice the word “math” and the abbreviation “CS” in the title of this thread. You happen to be living in a state, Massachusetts, that has a public flagship university (U.Mass Amherst) that is very good for math and CS, as well as a wide range of other potential majors.
I was a math major in university. I have worked in high tech for my entire career. I have seen a lot of very good engineers work together without caring and mostly without knowing where anyone got their degrees. Generally in high tech no one cares where you got your degree (or degrees). They care whether your software works (and is easy to read and well documented) and whether you are reasonable to get along with.
I am assuming that an A+ counts as a 4.3 and an A counts as a 4.0. For really highly ranked schools such as MIT or Stanford they might care about whether your A+'s are in math and your A-'s are in English, or the other way around. However, they also might not care. It is very difficult to predict admissions to the highest ranked universities in the US.
Exactly. Do not worry about what others are doing. Be the best person and the best student that you can be. Then do not worry about it. University admissions will work out just fine one way or another (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 is a very good point. You should be thinking about what you want in a college or university. Some students prefer a smaller school. Some prefer a larger university. Some want to focus on math and CS. Some want to focus on something else (one person I know was a dance major, another was a music major, others are in some form of health care). Some universities (MIT and Caltech come to mind) can be stressful for some students. Some are less stressful. I have however seen students get a very good education, and very good related experience such as research and internships, at a very wide range of universities.
No. IB does not hurt your chances. It might make it more difficult for some of us to predict your chances at highly ranked universities since most of us will be less familiar with it. University admissions staff will however be familiar with IB (or at least every university will have some staff that are). Close to straight A’s (with or without a + sign) in IB courses does suggest that you are well qualified to do well academically at any one of a wide range of universities.
Yes. To me your ECs look very good. I like the fact that you have shown a commitment to some of your activities for multiple years with significant accomplishments. I also like the fact that you are helping others through giving lessons.
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So my S24 went to a feederish HS with a 4.33 system. In our school as well, a GPA around 4.0 would be very good but not among the top few.
From our HS, applicants like that would be considered very competitive for all sorts of different “top” colleges. The dedicated college counselors would help them assess what they were really looking for in a college, and would guide them to a personalized list of Likelies, Targets, and Reaches. Realistically, there would be maybe a dozen or so colleges normally considered a stretch (although people could still get in with sufficiently special circumstances including hooks). But otherwise a very long list of great colleges would be considered Targets and realistic Reaches. So the real question would be which of those colleges to choose for the application list.
Of course that is just our HS, yours may be different. But I think it is illustrative of the fact that that a LOT of the value in these high schools can come from helping their competitive candidates not just apply to the same few schools, and instead steering them toward lists that really make sense for them as an individual.
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Take a deep breath. 
Here’s my perspective, all you can do is apply and wait. Most everything is out of your control. No matter how good your grades and ECs are, you have a 3-5% chance of getting in. There’s one thing I learned in my years of life experience. That is there’s more to life than the college you go to. Gainful employment has more to do with your major than your college brand name. An unmarketable major at an elite university is still unmarketable. A marketable major at a good school will get you employed no matter where you go. Don’t sweat it. It’s not worth it.
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