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<li>At the schools you’re thinking of, 80-90% of the students who submitted an exact class rank were in the top 10% of their graduating class. This number does not include people whose schools use quintiles or quarters, or people whose schools do not rank at all.</li>
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<p>(A rarely publicized quirk of college admissions is the fact that, all other things being equal, schools that do not rank their students do better in college admissions.)</p>
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<li>Even when we concentrate on the minority of students who come from high schools that rank, there is probably a lot of misinformation, misrepresentation, fudging of the facts and downright lying going on on the part of most universities. When I see a claim like “96% of our students were ranked in the top 10% of their class,” my first thought is, oh, you really care about US News then. Like, do not for one second believe that schools like UPenn, Brown, Northwestern, etc. are being entirely truthful and transparent about these things. Of course they’ll release numbers that make them look more selective. What methodology was used to arrive at these numbers is often the million-dollar question.</li>
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<p>That being said, the people who get admitted to highly selective institutions despite having a lower class rank usually have something really big going for them. An unhooked applicant who’s not in the top 10% of his or her class, and does not go to a feeder school, will have a very hard time making up for his or her rank.</p>