But something is missing from many applications: a class ranking, once a major component in admissions decisions.
Thousands of high schools have simply stopped providing that information, concluding it could harm the chances of their very good, but not best students.
Canny college officials, in turn, have found a tactical way to respond. Using broad data that high schools often provide, like a distribution of grade averages for an entire senior class, they essentially re-create an applicant's class rank.
The process has left them exasperated.
''If we're looking at your son or daughter and you want us to know that they are among the best in their school, without a rank we don't necessarily know that,'' said Jim Bock, dean of admissions and financial aid at Swarthmore College.
Admissions directors say the strategy can backfire.
When a high school provides a student's grade point average without giving class rank or other information that puts the grade in context, it significantly diminishes the meaning of the grade, several admissions directors said. And when high schools do not provide enough general information to re-create the class rank calculation, many admissions directors say they have little choice but to do something virtually no one wants them to do: give more weight to scores on the SAT and other standardized exams.
But high schools persist. The Miami-Dade County School Board decided last month to discontinue class rankings. Jeanne Friedman, the principal of Miami Beach High School and chairwoman of a committee of principals that lobbied to end ranking, said principals thought it would cut down on competition in schools and force college admissions officials to look more closely at each applicant.
Nearly 40 percent of all high schools have either stopped ranking their students or have ceased to give that information to colleges, according to a survey released last year by the National Association for College Admission Counseling, which represents high school guidance counselors and college admissions officers.
