Letters of Rec and Class Rank

Applying to College
1

I’m planning on applying early to MIT and Caltech next year when I’m a senior. I’m planning on getting letters of rec from my sophomore year AP Calc BC teacher/math club advisor and my junior year AP Lit teacher (and counselor, of course, as required). I have pretty good relations with my math teacher, although I wouldn’t say we’re very close beyond our interactions with math (through the club, Mathcounts coaching, class, etc).

My main concern is my relation with my AP Lit teacher. I will say that I’m not super good at or very interested in humanities. I often volunteer in class for helping pass out papers, etc, but I’m somewhat lazy when it comes to homework/classwork. I’ve been doing less and less annotations, and I’m starting to have trouble catching on to the meanings of the books we read. Our relation outside of class isn’t super good either, as we don’t really have similar tastes (she wouldn’t get the jokes I make, or wouldn’t find them funny, etc). Maybe I’ve been super paranoid lately about all this, but I’m starting to think it’s not the best idea to get a letter of rec from her. Should I work towards bettering our relationship, or should I switch over to some other humanities teacher?

Also, as senior year inches closer, I’m starting to think more about class rank (particularly for graduation since I want to deliver the valedictorian speech, not for college apps). We had several new students this school year, and several of them came from schools that offered several AP classes, and so their GPAs prior to coming here were much higher than the maximum GPA you could get at my school (4.8 v. 4.5). There are also a few people only taking 4 or 5 classes that are all APs to try to get a 5.0 GPA. Typically would this strategy help put you as valedictorian, or are these taken into consideration? I’m just wondering since normally I would be valedictorian (and everyone considers me as the valedictorian), but I was recently informed about all this.

2

I would not stress about being val,or trying to game the system to achieve val. In the long run, it’s not that big a deal. While school policies’ differ, in general, transfer students have to have been a student at the school for X years and only the grades at the current school count for val/sal status.SO you might want to clarify. Also note, and this is obvious, the strategy of getting a 5.0 only works if you get all A’s.

In terms of recs, personally I would not ask for a rec from a teacher in whose class I was slacking.

3

A valedictorian at one school could be middle rank at another school, you never know. Class rank is not reported at many schools anymore, and colleges have gradually diminished interest in it.

4

I agree with @momansland, our school di dnot report any ranking except for top 5 or 10%.