Class Rank: Is it Better to Go to a Competitive High School?
/Should your child attend an “easy” high school? Learn everything you need to know about class rank, including how it influences college admissions odds
is it better to go to a competitive high school?
Introduction
If your child plans on applying to America’s most selective universities, you’re probably wondering whether the difficulty of their high school will be considered by admissions officers. You might also be wondering how class rank—a metric that contextualizes their academic performance—will impact their application?
Simply put, class rank is a way of comparing your child’s GPA to their classmates’ GPA. Let’s say your child belongs to the Class of 2021, and that the Class of 2021 has 100 students. Class rank is a way of ordering these 100 students from highest to lowest according to their relative GPAs.
If your child has the highest GPA in their class, their class rank would be #1—they’d be the valedictorian. If your child has the lowest, their class rank would be #100. Depending on the school, class rank might be recalculated each term or just once, in the middle or end of 12th grade.
That’s simple enough, but it gets more complicated if your child attends an especially competitive or large high school. Does it mean the same thing to be valedictorian of a class in a public high school of 3,000 students per class as it does to rank first at a magnet or private school of 700 students? And what if your child attends a high school with unconventional grading systems, or that doesn’t rank their students at all?
The key takeaway is that class rank, like all aspects of college admissions, is considered holistically. That means that colleges treat it as one element among many—alongside ACT/SAT test scores, extracurricular activities, Common App essays, and letters of recommendation.
Need inspiration for your Common App personal statement? Click below for instant access to 25 full-length example essays including advanced breakdowns of why they resonate with admissions committees.
Gain instant access to 25 exclusive full-length examples covering all seven prompts, plus comprehensive analyses for each to help you craft stellar essays.
Admissions officers understand that high schools vary widely in terms of resources, competitiveness, and ranking systems. If class rank is a valuable measure of how your child has performed at their high school, it may come into play in their college admissions process. If it isn’t considered important at their high school, you can assume it probably won’t play into your child’s admissions prospects.
Class rank figures to some degree in the admissions process for many colleges, though its influence has waned in recent years. According to the National Association for College Admission Counseling’s annual State of College Admission report, a very small percentage—only 9.1% of colleges—said class rank was a factor of “considerable importance” in their admissions. Around a third said it was of “moderate” or “limited importance” (29.1% and 34.1% respectively). Just over a quarter (27.7%) said it was of “no importance.”
How to calculate class rank
Schools may choose to calculate class rank using either weighted or unweighted grades. Unweighted class rank generally uses a standard 0 to 4.0 scale (though some schools opt for 0-100% grades), and every A contributes equally to rank no matter the difficulty of the course. Weighted class rank uses a 0 to 5.0 scale, in which your child’s grades in honors, AP, or IB courses are weighted higher.
To illustrate the difference, let’s say there are two students who have both made all As throughout high school. One of them has taken several AP courses and the other has taken none. In a school that uses an unweighted system, both students would have the same GPA, and thus the same class rank. However, in a school that uses a weighted system, the student who aced several AP courses would have a higher class rank. The weighted system, therefore, rewards students for taking more difficult classes.
Some high schools eschew conventional class rank and rank their students instead according to broad percentiles. They might, for instance, break the graduating class into quarters, and simply report which students land in the top 25%, the top 50%, etc.
(Suggested reading: Ivy League Acceptance Rates: What You’re Up Against)
Then there are schools that don’t report class rank at all—as many as 40% of high schools in America, according to the National Association for College Admission Counseling. Schools that avoid ranking often choose to do so in order to reduce intra-class rivalry and competition. They may also be influenced by the reality that small differences in rank are not very meaningful and could have an adverse impact on a student’s eligibility for scholarships.
Nonetheless, when one looks at the makeup of incoming classes at Ivy League and Ivy+ colleges, patterns in high school class rank can be seen. Determining whether class rank is a cause or a byproduct of admission at top colleges is tougher to disentangle.
How much does class rank matter to college?
Class rank can be a useful consideration for admissions officers. GPA does not exist in a vacuum, and class rank puts your child’s grades in context. For example, it matters to admissions officers whether your child took advantage of the opportunities they were given.
Ranking as 15th in a class might seem impressive on face, but if your child attended a school where As were given freely, it may not be as impressive as a student who ranked 15th at a school where an A grade was rarer. In short, admissions officers want to see not only that applicants excelled, but that they excelled in a context that was exceptionally challenging.
Class rank can also matter when it comes to eligibility for certain scholarships and for guaranteed admission in certain state university systems (though it’s often one of several factors).
Florida’s “Talented Twenty” program, for instance, offers automatic admission to its state universities for residents graduating in the top 20% of their high school class. Texas has a similar policy, with guaranteed admission to any of their state universities (with the exception of UT-Austin, see below) for residents graduating in the top 10% of their high school class, as does California, which offers guaranteed admission to the UC system for residents graduating in the top 9% (though you won’t necessarily have your pick of schools). Iowa, Montana, Missouri, and Mississippi offer automatic admission to their public universities as well based on a host of factors, class rank among them.
Even for top-tier schools that don’t have strict cutoffs, many matriculants graduated in the top 10% of their high school class. In Yale’s class of 2026, for instance, 96% of matriculants whose high schools reported class rank graduated in the top 10%. Stanford’s most recent admissions statistics on class rank are from 2016, and 95% percent of admitted students that year graduated in the top 10% of their high school class.
The numbers are similar for Public Ivies and elite liberal arts colleges. 85% of admitted students at the University of Virginia, for instance, graduated in the top 10% of their high school class, and so did 92% of admitted students at Amherst College.
These numbers, however, should not necessarily be taken as evidence that class rank is an overly important criterion for admissions officers. Most admitted students at elite colleges have superb GPAs, and class rank is always, at least in part, a reflection of GPA. A high class rank is a byproduct of general excellence.
(Suggested reading: How to Get into Harvard)
The makeup of Harvard’s class of 2023 can give a better picture of how much class rank matters, ultimately, in the upper echelon of American universities. According to the Harvard Crimson’s 2019 survey, of the students who received a class rank, 75.7% reported graduating in the top 2% of their high school class. However, only 68.5% of matriculants attended a high school that reported class rank at all.
That’s probably in part because many of the nation’s most elite private and magnet high schools have moved away from class rank. Neither Exeter or Andover, top northeast boarding schools, report class rank, nor do New York’s Stuyvesant, Los Angeles’s Harvard-Westlake, or Virginia’s Thomas Jefferson High School of Science and Technology. Many public high schools have moved from ordinal ranking to percentile ranking. Colleges have adapted to these shifting circumstances by giving less weight to class rank.
This means that about 32% of Harvard’s class of 2023 attended high schools that did not report class rank at all. Both Harvard and Yale downplay the importance of class rank in their admissions process. Yale reviews applications holistically, and their admissions website insists that “you will not be at a disadvantage if your school does not provide GPA or rank.” Harvard admissions officers don’t consider class rank at all in making their decision process.
(Suggested reading: How to Get into Yale)
Is it better to go to a competitive high school?
Bottom line: Top colleges want students who have earned high grades at competitive high schools.
Some parents wonder whether there are advantages to being “a big fish in a small pond”—for instance, you might be asking yourself if it’s best for your child to attend the large public high school in your county or to enroll in the small Catholic high school down the road. We advise making these decisions based on where your child is most likely to thrive. If your child takes challenging courses but earns poor grades in them, college admissions officers will not take a more lenient position just because of the academic rigor.
One last detail to consider is that when your child applies to college, their school college or guidance counselor will write a letter to admissions committees that places your child in the context of the school. Even if your child’s school doesn’t rank, the counselor may be able to indicate whether your child was in the top 25 or 10% in the class, or provide more qualitative perspectives on their success, pointing out, for instance, that your daughter founded the school’s first extracurricular robotics team, or that your son has the best varsity swim team record of the decade.
And don’t encourage your child to take easier classes for the sake of ranking higher. Admissions officers aren’t duped by this kind of strategy, as they want to see that your child took advantage of opportunities offered by their school.
Final Thoughts
In general, if your child hopes to attend an Ivy League or Ivy+ college, and their high school reports class rank, graduating in the top 10% of their high school class is probably a good goal to aim for. But remember that the other elements of the application—GPA, extracurriculars, and your child’s essays—are probably worthy of more attention and make a more significant impression on admissions officers.
About the Author
Dr. Shirag Shemmassian is the Founder of Shemmassian Academic Consulting and one of the world's foremost experts on college admissions. For nearly 20 years, he and his team have helped thousands of students get into top programs like Harvard, Stanford, and MIT using his exclusive approach.
