Click here to go to the NEW College Discussion Forum

I go to a public high school in near Boston of a school system that has the reputation of being one of the strongest ones in the state. All the classes that go through the school system are very strong. However my class in particular is stronger than almost any other class in the schools history for no real reason whatsoever. It's just highly skewed at the top. This has also been seen to be true in testing. Massachusetts requires students in 8th and 10th grade to take a standardized test, which determines whether you graduate high school. In both 8th and 10th grade, my particular class was the top in the state as compared to every other class in the state. So I'm 40th in my class of about 210. However, if I was just in last years class I would have been 19th. And I'm sure that in Many schools across the country I'd be in the top 1-2%. So despite the fact that my grades are pretty good in a very strong school, my class rank looks awful for the schools I'm applying to. Will this hurt me?