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When colleges post the percentage of students admitted to their school with a certain rank, is that rank unweighted or weighted?

By Marite (Marite) on Wednesday, October 06, 2004 - 10:32 pm: Edit

Alita:

Grades are weighted or not weighted. Ranks themselves are not weighted. So if a student is ranked #5 in his/her school, it is based on grades, which may or may not be weighted depending on the school.

By Motheroftwo (Motheroftwo) on Wednesday, October 06, 2004 - 10:35 pm: Edit

I have a similar question. When the colleges post the high school GPA's of their students, are they based on weighted or unweighted grades?

By Interesteddad (Interesteddad) on Wednesday, October 06, 2004 - 10:47 pm: Edit

More often than not, it would be some kind of weighted GPA. However, I think that published GPA is almost useless for any kind of statistical analysis of admissions odds at a college.

IMO, high school class rank is the single most important factor in college admissions. Unfortunately, it is meaningless without knowing the context of the type of high school. For example, top 10% at Exeter may be equivalent to valedictorian at a decent public high school.

By Motheroftwo (Motheroftwo) on Wednesday, October 06, 2004 - 10:55 pm: Edit

And also, apparently many of the top high schools don't rank at all, since in US News it shows that class rank data for many schools is based on information from less than half of the students.

By Rhonda63 (Rhonda63) on Thursday, October 07, 2004 - 09:04 am: Edit

ID, I agree that rank is meaningless w/o some context, including type of HS. Also, it's important to know whether the school ranks based on weighted or unweighted GPA.

By Alita (Alita) on Thursday, October 07, 2004 - 01:42 pm: Edit

my school has two gpas, weighted and unweighted. It also publishes a rank to go with each GPA. We do not have titles for graduation, ie val, sal, they are only used for college applications. My question is that unweighted, my rank is 11/315 and weighted, it is 2/315. Which one are colleges going to use?

By Rhonda63 (Rhonda63) on Thursday, October 07, 2004 - 01:49 pm: Edit

Alita, they will probably use whatever your GC gives them. Since you're well within the top 10% either way (I guess you're in the top 5% either way), you should be fine regardless.

IMO, the elite colleges want to see that you are ranked high not just based on the fact that you've taken a lot of heavily weighted courses, but also based on high grades. In other words, you are getting grades at least as high as the kids taking easier classes, so your rank is not just propped up by weighting for AP or honors courses. So I think that if your school provides both numbers, it should help you, because it shows that even if you remove the weighting, your grades were among the best in your fairly large class.