What are the pros and cons of schools reporting class rank to colleges from point of view of top 10 students?
There aren’t any cons if you already know you’re in the top 10. To me, the main problem with class rank is that it either discourages students from taking challenging classes (if unweighted GPA is used) or it discourages them from taking art, music, or other unweighted elective classes (if weighted GPA is used). It also leads to unhealthy competition and hostility in some schools.
Very high class rank is not a guarantee of admission to highly selective colleges. One reason is that so much more than grades is involved, including above all test scores and distinguished achievements or EC’s. But being among top 10 students in a competitive high school is always going to be a plus. (Didn’t work for me, back in the day, when I was ranked 5/577 but disappointing test scores worked against me.)
Quartiles and/or deciles should be used rather than precise rank. This would eliminate the ugly competitiveness that often accompanies the race to the very top spots.
No one can argue with that but what are the pros and cons from narrow point of view of top college admissions for top students with top SAT and good ECs?
I say that you should always report. Pros: the college can see the competitiveness of your school given your grades even if you do not rank in the top 10%, and if you are then it does not matter. Honestly, unless you are performing poorly, I cannot see class rank as a con.
@“yalie 2011”
What do you really want to know?
Your past posts indicate you were a college freshman in fall 2007. Clearly, you are not in HS now. And it’s unlikely you have a HS child of your own.
You have started a few threads related to class rank, GPA etc. are you doing research for a graduate school term paper?
I would love to know why these questions are important to you…and what you REALLY want to know.
How much harder would it be for a student in the 26th percentile of his class rank to get into a top 20 college than a student in the 24th percentile. I think this may be a better question.
Also, don’t schools make an estimated class rank anyways if there is none provided? So other than not having it “published” for everyone to see and the pro’s and con’s that would come with that, I don’t think there are really any pro’s and con’s to having a class rank or not
Every elite school where I live ( and we have some of the top public HS in the country) have eliminated rank because they found it did students more harm than good in admissions. That’s the bottom line. My kids school did a study and found students did much better who were in the 25 th to 50 th percentile when they stopped reporting rank
I think a lot depends on the degree to which colleges are able to come up with estimated class ranks.
I have heard (but do not know for certain) that my kids’ high school stopped ranking years ago because they felt it was hurting the admissions chances of students at our state flagship.