Hello,
I am slowly building my school list to apply for my graduate education. I’m a EE International student. So I was wondering should i eliminate Universities like Cornell that demand top 5% class standing. I’m no where near the top 5%. We have about 60 students in our class (pretty small I think).
So should I eliminate schools that demand top class standings? how rigidly do they follow that if I have good research and GRE and a GPA of 3.78?
What does that even mean? I was probably top 20 or 25% in my class if you mean all the kids graduating in my year at my college. I’m sure I was top 10-15% if you only look at math majors from my year. If you only look at performance in math classes, I’m sure I was top 10%, maybe even top 5%. Most of these stats aren’t even available to me anyway (and certainly not before graduation when most students apply). I doubt schools really care about class ranking, other than on the LOR forms “is this person in the top 5%/10%/25%/50%?”
Where did you get the info that “Universities like Cornell that demand top 5% class standing”?
My D was recently admitted to several top 10 schools, including Cornell, for EE Ph. D. program. None of the schools she applied to mentioned “top 5%.”
Her undergrad school never publishes class ranking (I don’t even know if it does ranking). If class ranking were available, I’d think she would be in the top 10%, but not necessarily top 5%.
She does have good GPA (3.85), and GRE (+95%), and 2 year research experience under a world-renowned professor, and great LoRs from him.
I am assuming that you are referring to this line on Cornell’s PhD admissions page, which says
Class Standing: Student should be in the Top 5% of their class or above
Particularly if your college doesn’t really rank students (which many don’t), I’m imagining that’s more of a desired comparative statement than an absolute. If Cornell is otherwise a great fit for you and you meet the other requirements, I would go ahead and apply.
My school had rankings on the transcript for the semester and cumulative. But that info doesn’t tell you much… you’re also being compared to the humanities majors who couldn’t pass a calculus class if their lives depended on it. I’m not aware of any other publicly available information from my school.
It is likely referring to the typical question that is asked of a recommender by most schools. The recommender is asked if the candidate is in the top 1%, 5%, and so on.
Hey everyone. Thanks for the replies. I do get your points now. But the awkward problem is my University do publish class ranking, not in percentage in position. Thanks guys.
Why would we assume that humanities students can’t pass a calculus class? Choice of major is just that - a choice, and not necessarily indicative of one’s skills and abilities.
Anyway, I think you should go ahead and try, OP. The worst that can happen is that they reject you - but maybe your grades and other parts of your package will overcome your class rank.
Oh dear. Read my post again. I specified the (nonempty) subset of humanities majors who can’t pass a calculus class.
I really don’t think it is a matter of rank in the entire university. That really makes no sense. It is more a question of how do you stand in your peer group of majors. That is the purpose of the question that graduate programs put on their requests for reference letters.
Good post. Even if you’re not in the top 5%, it’s still worth applying. Many schools, including top schools, indicate certain numbers that aren’t always strictly enforced. For example, Berkeley indicates they want >= 80%ile on the Math Subject GRE (for Math Ph.D.), but if you look at admissions results on mathematicsgre.com, there are plenty of cases of admission there with scores more like 75%ile, perhaps even lower.