Hopefullly a meaningful discussion of Class Rank, GPA and Test Scores in relationship to top schools

Hi, I'm writing this for those that want a better insight into the college admissions process. There are roughly 25,000 high schools and 3000 of these are private high schools. From these 28,000 schools and a plethora of Int'l high schools over 3 Million US and perhaps 300K are another group, Int'l students vying for a spot at top schools. There are only about 14,000 or 0.4% who will end up matriculating into the Ivy League. So even if you feel you should be given a seat at one, it's very important to have a comprehensive application strategy with other types of schools you would be very happy to attend if that may not work out for you.

Many of you are aware of the Common App and that there are places to put in your Class Rank if your school ranks and your GPA, however, your school calculates that usually on a 4.0 scale converted from a 100 point scale in some cases.

But unlike entering a 30 ACT score of 1350 SAT score, class rank and GPA do not mean the same thing from school to school. Whereas, regardless of where you attend high school, if you put down you got a 30 ACT or 1350 SAT, that means the same thing. Regardless of what City, State, Country you live in your standardized test scores mean the same things. What doesn't mean the same thing is that certain colleges, under the guise of a holistic review process, use Affirmative Action to bump up a Black or Latina person's standardized test score and deflate an Asian person's test score because of their private enrollment practices to make the admissions process a just, equitable, inclusive and diverse process. While this may not seem true, admissions data shows that on average different groups based on race, get admitted into tops schools with different stats and other attributes. The recent Harvard lawsuit won by Harvard indicates that Harvard can use race as a criteria for admitting its cohorts.

With regards to class rank and GPA, they are can never be "apples to apples" because each of the 28000+ schools has its own rules, policies, and student body composition of innate talent and abilities. So if you attend a low-ranking public school in East Los Angeles, Detroit or Alabama, you might be ranked in the Top 5% or numerically ranked 5/500 but an elite college may be comparing you to a student who is Top 25%. One of the cardinal sins of higher education is using a school-wide GPA or another standardized testing to determine public funding for secondary schools. What this means is that at the expense of learning germane useful things to improve your odds of getting accepted into a top college, public school officials focus on making sure that their class of cohorts tests better than other schools in the district so they get a steady stream of money coming into the school. Often the losers of this priority are the very same students they are responsible to educate because there is systemic-wide grade inflation and a ranking system that is purely conciliatory.

It's not different to the likes of joining a little league baseball team and there are 10 teams and everyone gets a trophy and the end of the year just for showing up. The same problem with high schools creates this artificial sense that you are all excellent students because you have a 4.5 weighted GPA or 5.3 weighted GPA or 3.90 Unweighted GPA. There is so much grade inflation in the US right now that no one can understand why they are not getting into top schools. So class rank can be deceiving as well because you might think you are doing a stellar job being Top 10% of your high school but in reality, you might be bottom 90% if you attended a very competitive charter school like Bronx Science. While Harvard doesn't explain why it doesn't consider Class Rank, this could be the reason.

I have a friend at a boarding school who shared with me their school report. Only 1% of 250 student seniors have a UWGPA of 3.8-4.0. 5% have a 3.7-3.8, and 26% have a 3.6-3.7 and 28% have a 3.3-3.6, and 18% 3.2-3.3. and 22% are below a 3.2. Yet in the past 5 years, 330 applications have been accepted into Ivy leagues colleges and 240 have matriculated or 24%, which is nearly 5 X times the average Ivy acceptance rate. Similarly to having a lower Class Rank and lower GPA, it would be also fair to say that these students get in with lower test scores as well. Perhaps 1/3 of the students that were accepted into Cornell over the past 5 years have submitted an ACT score of 30 or less and an SAT score of 1350 or less. The knee-jerk reaction might be "this is outrageous" the reality is that they are just working the system put in place by our founding fathers 300 years ago. So while the holistic process admits underprivileged and marginalized applicants, the same process admits wealthy students who have less than perfect grades, GPAs, and ranks.

Some key takeaways that many public applicants are unaware of are the following:

1.) While US Public schools have Grade inflation, may private schools have grade deflation. At public schools the curve is weighted heavily by all the students with As and Bs, crowing the right side of the bell curve. There is little differentiation between someone ranked 5, 10 or 25th at a large public school. At a private school there is more granularity in ranking because like the SAT, there are more numerical scores like 1510,1520,1530 etc.

2.) Class rank is overemphasized at Public HSs because many students are unaware that there is an equal and opposite consideration for rank at most top private schools. With admit rates of 10-20% for Top private schools, one could say they attract the cream of the crop cohorts as 9th/10th graders. If one considers who their competition is, perhaps they do not mind that they are in the top 50th percentile vs. top 5% at Public schools.

3.) While there is an emphasis to have high-tier ECs and leadership activities at Public HSs, many of the Top Private schools focus on athletics, especially Niche college sports like fencing, sailing, water polo, lacrosse, field hockey, and rowing, etc. Why? These applicants have a better chance of being a recruited athlete and get a great scholarship from an Ivy or Elite college because they value such cohorts. So the takeaway is that institutions that have facilities and resources impact your attractiveness to Ivys if they have similar facilities like indoor hockey rinks, indoor rowing tanks, and indoor competition swimming centers.

4. Standardized tests scores don't mean that much when you attend a top private high school as long as you can tick off the main boxes like course rigor, ECs, and essays. With regards to essays, recommendations, private schools also have a huge advantage because each of the dozens of college counselors at these schools has personal relationships with Top Admissions offices. I imagine there is just as many staff dedicated to helping students wordsmith their essays as well.

5. As feeder schools to the Ivys/Elites, many private schools improve your odds of getting in by a factor of up to 5 times.

The reason I'm sharing this is so everyone applying to top colleges has realistic expectations and have a better understanding of some of the challenges in higher education of making the admissions process more transparent and merit-based. I'm sharing this because most college applicants will have to rely on having very excellent attributes in their application file to get accepted at a top school because it's not a meritocracy. And I truly believe that sites like CollegeVine do an excellent job of helping everyone who is not a recipient of a private education arm themselves with the stats and credentials they need to effectively compete. No one likes to hear some difficult truths but if you know why you are working so hard, sometimes it's useful to have a better understanding of the lay of the battlefield, for lack of a better term. Please don't shoot the messenger. Most of you know that my enjoyment of participating in CollegeVine comes from helping others and giving advice and information to help them make informed choices, nothing else. So good luck over the next cycle and the cycles thereafter.