<p>California high schools not bothering with rank may be due to UC and CSU not considering rank at all (note that UC ELC is based on comparison of GPA against a benchmark GPA set by previous classes at the high school).</p>
<p>Of course, there have been discussions about gaming various high schools’ rankings, such as getting a lower rank based on weighted GPA due to taking an extra course without an honors version available.</p>
<p>To avoid such misaligned incentives, perhaps a better method of ranking is to count grade *points<a href=“not%20grade%20point%20%5Bi%5Daverage%5B/i%5D”>/i</a>, weighted for honors/AP/etc., in academic courses, and add a fraction of grade points from non-academic courses as a tiebreaker (i.e. if two students had the same grades in the same academic courses, but one took extra courses in wood shop, auto shop, etc., the one with the extras ranks higher).</p>