<p>
</p>
<p>Penn’s claim that 100% of its enrolled freshmen submitted class rank does indeed look a bit odd. But that’s not the only odd thing about the reported class rank numbers. </p>
<p>Notice that the percentage of the entering class who rank in the top 10% in HS is a huge factor in a college’s US News ranking, almost as important as SAT scores. For “national universities” and “national LACs,” percentage ranking in the top 10% is worth 6% of the college’s total US News rating. (In contrast, HS GPA counts for nothing to US News). So class ranking is a figure that any college that cares about its US News ranking is going to care about—and they all do, no matter what they might say about it for public consumption.</p>
<p>But the class ranking numbers the colleges report to US News look awfully dodgy. </p>
<p>Consider this: Harvard reports that 68% of its entering freshmen reported their HS class rank, and 95% of them were in the top 10% of their HS class. Those figures sound reasonable, and impressive. Most public high schools do rank, but a school like Harvard would draw heavily from elite private schools, many of which don’t rank because they know any rank below top 10% could hurt their students’ college chances, and they generally have many strong students outside the top 10%. So Harvard getting a HS class rank from about 2/3 of its freshmen seems reasonable.</p>
<p>But then you go to co-#1 Princeton, and the figures are strikingly different. Princeton says 99% of its entering freshmen were in the top 10% of their HS class. Impressive; better than Harvard by a comfortable margin. But wait! That’s based on only 29% of Princeton’s entering freshmen reporting their HS class rank.</p>
<p>Say what? Harvard gets class rank from 68% of its freshmen, but Princeton gets class rank from only 29%? Are we to believe that the class composition at these schools is so radically different that Harvard takes more than 2 out of 3 freshmen from schools that rank, while Princeton takes just over 1 out of 4 of its students from schools that rank? Or is Princeton just conveniently forgetting about or losing the class rankings of some students whose class rank it would prefer not to report, so as to push its percentage in the top 10% up to nearly 100%? That’s just an enormous discrepancy, one that’s difficult to accept at face value.</p>
<p>Most public universities report that they get class rank from 80-90% of their entering freshmen. It’s understandable that elite private colleges and universities would have a somewhat lower percentage. Harvard’s 68% is plausible. Some are a bit lower, in the 50-55% range, which still seems credible. Princeton’s 29%? I ain’t buying it. At the other extreme, Penn’s 100% also seems not credible, which to my mind also raises questions about the credibility of the rest of what they report–including their claim that 96% of their freshmen were in the top 10% of their HS class, again a figure better than Harvard’s and one that would do much to bolster Penn’s lofty US News ranking.</p>
<p>Dodgy. Very dodgy.</p>