<p>Class rank became a meaningless honor at my school when GPA’s were not weighted and kids gets getting B’s in AP classes were outranked by kids getting A’s in metal shop.</p>
<p>I think that this is probably more interesting to schools that have low numbers in classes. I had over 700 in my class and had no idea about where my class standing was, so it didn’t matter to me. My dad had like 30 in his class, so he knew exactly where he stood!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Of course, weighted GPAs have their own problem in that a student who wants to take an extra course that is not weighted for GPA can get penalized. For example:</p>
<p>Student 1: 6 honors/AP courses
Student 2: 6 honors/AP courses, metal shop</p>
<p>Let’s say they are taking the same honors/AP courses and get A grades in all courses. Should 2 rank worse than 1 due to a “lower” GPA because an unweighted metal shop course was included? (You can substitute any additional non-honors/AP course for metal shop, such as art, music, additional academic elective, etc…)</p>
<p>Better would be to rank based on weighted grade points (not GPA) in academic courses, with fractional grade points in non-academic courses added as a tiebreaker.</p>
<p>exactly UCB ;)</p>