<p>I currently attend a small private school with around 50 students in my class. I currently have a 3.9 uw gpa and a 4.25 w gpa but I am only ranked 18% because of the school’s small size. I also have a 32 ACT and am OOS. How significant of a factor will my class rank be?</p>
<p>If your small private school is also known to be rigorous, it may not have the impact you think. It’s not that they never admit outside the top ten percentile, its just a general metric to view academic competitiveness. Eg. For some awesome programs instate, eg a nearby IB program, they admit far outside the top 10.</p>
<p>Your ACT score “backs up” your GPA, meaning with a strong ACT they won’t necessarily assume your GPA represents grade inflation, so you should be fine. Stats-wise, you’re very competitive for Umich. Next, they’ll look to reccs and areas in which you’ve distinguished yourself.
Best wishes!</p>
<p>Thanks for the response! Do you think it is worth it to attempt to explain my situation in the common app or just leave it alone and try not to bring attention to it?</p>
<p>Does your school actually rank their students? Most small private universities have a policy against ranking students. That is unusual. At any rate, if your school is competitive and you are doing well, class rank will not play a significant part in the decision.</p>
<p>It is unusual, but my school does not have a history of sending students to good or great universities, so they don’t really know that. My school is competitive in regard to students achieving high gpas and high test scores, but not in regard to what colleges they end up at. My school has sent kids with 34 ACTs and 4.0 gpas to provincial schools.</p>
<p>I had a top 20% rank and 3.74 GPA and got in. In the common data set, unweighted GPA is listed as “Very important” whereas class rank is merely listed as “considered”. I honestly don’t think it holds much weight, so I wouldn’t worry too much.</p>