<p>Hello Everyone,</p>
<p>As you may know, a good number of high schools do not provide class ranks on transcripts anymore, which is a key part of the students application.</p>
<p>My question is this: Are you disenfranchised if your school doesn’t provide Penn with your class rank? Can anyone comment on this–especially if they were ACCEPTED into Penn/Wharton/CAS/etc. and did NOT give class rank? Assume that you aren’t valedictorian–our school does give a class profile with what each decible is (top 10%, top 20%, etc.) and the highest GPA…thus, it is obvious for Penn to realize if the valedictorian applies to their school. </p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>^ Absolutely not, rank is only considered if it’s provided. However if you’re school provides percentile rank, then it would be best to be at the highest percentile rank possible, preferably the top 10% in your case.</p>
<p>^Ok, that makes sense.</p>
<p>Also, how about SAT vs. ACT? What if your SAT “translates” to a 33 but your ACT is 34/35? If you send in Subject Tests, are they discounted (as in, are they overlooked)? I think I will have very strong SAT-IIs (780+ on three of them).</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>SAT and ACT scores are different, I really don’t think they’re comparable even though there are conversion charts that exist. Almost all the tops schools, if not all the top schools, will only consider the the one you did better on.</p>
<p>But since Penn wants SAT + 2 Subjects OR ACT w/Writing, are the subject test scores then not considered?</p>
<p>^ On their site it states that you can send either the SAT+2 Subject tests or the ACT W/Writing, but if you were to also send subject tests score with your ACT score, I would think that they would consider them.</p>
<p>Also, if Penn is your #1 choice, I highly suggest you apply ED.</p>
<p>Penn’s policy is that you MUST send all of your testing history. So you don’t really get a choice. If you take it and receive scores back, they want them.</p>
<p>Ok, thanks for all the info. I think it would be to my advantage to send all my scores–I have comparable ACT/SAT scores, and pretty good SAT-II’s. Is it true if you are a native speaker in Chinese, the 800 doesn’t count? I took Chinese School every Sunday for 10 years to earn my 800…I wasn’t “blessed” with a gift.</p>
<p>I think there’s some truth to it, but if you list Chinese Summer School for 10 years on your college app, they’d realize you weren’t just wasting your time for 10 years of your life learning a language you were raised with. Just be specific in your description of the Chinese Summer School.</p>
<p>Oh ok, so that could be an additional info section?</p>
<p>Uh, I got into Penn and my school doesn’t rank. Instead of ranking, my high school sends each college a profile of itself (a two page summary of my high school and what classes it offers, mean SAT, # of grads to college, etc). This profile has a GPA chart which shows the distribution of GPAs in the class (up until junior year, of course). Your school probably does the same.</p>
<p>@minniemouse23424: Mine does! (Except, without the SAT scores). So Penn (and other top schools) can use this profile to gauge about where you are at?</p>
<p>Yupyup! That’s how they do that. High schools that say they don’t rank actually do, they just don’t release the ranking stuff to students. The colleges can see the GPA chart and gauge where you are in the class. Don’t worry! :)</p>
<p>@minnie: Thanks! I did send you an inbox message–hope you got it!</p>