Yeah, it seems to me that class rank focuses on students competing against each other, whereas with grades and rigor students are essentially competing against themselves (to do the very best they can). That kind of competition between students - especially with the accompanying pressure of looming college applications - seems like a lot stress with little actual pay off (since the same info on student strength can be gleaned from the grades and rigor).
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I am in the no rank camp as well. There can be a problem, though, when kids assume their class rank would have been higher and apply accordingly-there were kids who thought they were top 6% who were not top 25% actually.
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IMHO doesnât really matter unless you live in TX (IIRC correctly U of Texas Austin automatically will admit top 7% from the HS in TX).
Almost all applicants of highly selective universities are ranked highly (if they are ranked) and even if they are not ranked, they all have impressive grades, rigors and ECs.
The questions with different ECs and rigors would make rankings almost meaningless (unless you put students in tier). Letâs take one example: how would you rank 2 students with similar GPA and ECs with the only difference one got A at (letâs say) one subject taken at local community college as part of dual enrollment vs one who got B but taking the course at the state flagship?
How would you rank 2 students with the same GPA and rigor but one plays football and one plays basketball ?
I believe AOs know based on the grades, rigor, ECs whether students are âtop tierâ or â2nd tierâ without looking at the rankings.
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I agree with thisâours doesnât rank but does announce top decile and announces Val near graduation(though often it is suspected earlier). Over the years, when a âValâ or âSalâ has much less than average success for our school, they often have played it safe with courses, or spent all their time studying with not much EC impact. Some have also chased scores, taking tests 3-4-5+times to get as high as possible.
The Val/Sals who have gotten into the top schools usually have insane course rigor(ie take academic risk), still are very involved, and got testing knocked out early with minimal prep.
I think that personality differences and true intellectual curiosity is revealed in LORs, essays, interviews, etc.
OP, your school eliminating rank wonât matter much at all as far as college admissions. Course rigor and other things matter far more than rank.
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This is true at Dâs school as well. As of late February, no one has any idea who Val will be - although maybe some suspect. But certainly no one knows in time to use it on college applications. But whatâs (maybe?) good at Dâs school is that Val is not automatically given to the highest GPA student - high stats students must apply to be Val and there is a selection process that I donât know a ton about (because D didnât apply - so no personal experience).
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Oh here is the explanation (from the website):
Graduating seniors with a total high school GPA of 3.9 (unweighted) as of the end of the fall semester of their senior year will be invited to apply for the award. Applications will be due within two weeks of the beginning of the 4th quarter (April 21st). Applicants will be required to maintain the 3.9 GPA through the end of the Spring Semester.
Applicants will prepare a resume (identified by student I.D. #, no names) that demonstrates outstanding achievement in at least two of the five following categories:
- Athletics
- The Arts
- Community Service
- Extra-curricular Academic Competitions (e.g. Model U.N., Mathletes, etc.)
- Internships and other community or work-based learning experiences
A panel of judges, comprised of two teachers, an administrator, a counselor, and a junior in good standing, will review the applications and select six finalists. The scoring will be âblindâ with the panel not able to see the name of the applicant. The resumes will be assessed and scored individually by the judges. No discussions between judges will be allowed. Candidates with equal scores will get a second reading by the judges.
Finalists will be contacted and asked to prepare a 3-5 minute draft of a graduation speech. They may be asked to provide additional documentation as evidence of the experiences described in their resume. The panelistsâ top selection will be the Valedictorian. The second place student will be the Salutatorian. The Valedictorian is expected to speak at the commencement ceremony.
At our schoolâŠ.when they did class rank (no longer done), students knew their class rank as of the end of the junior yearâŠand then again at the end of the first semester of their senior year. Graduation often took place before the end of the school yearâŠso really that midyear class rank was it.
Many students didnât know their final class rank when they applied to college.
There was sputtering when ranking was stopped, but that was at least 12 years ago. Itâs the way it is now. I donât know any school around here that ranks studentsâŠpublic or private.
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When Dâs school ranked, the kids knew at the end of every single quarter, and they published honor roll in rank order. Thankfully they did away with that.
They only reported deciles to colleges though unless it was the Val or Sal.
Too much gaming of the rankings because honors and AP courses were weighed the same and the top 10% were all super close to each other with their GPAs.
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Well our HS still ranks, as do all the county HSs. But I donât think ours is a school anyone wants to emulate.
With the elimination of (or reduction in emphasis on) class rank, standardized test scores, and AP test scores, how do admissions officers put grades in context? Do the school profiles contain enough information for them to do so?
If a college has had a lot kids from a certain high school matriculate at that college, I can see that the college would have some data to help with this. But what about applicants from high schools that havenât had (m)any kids go the college?
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This is why I think that many people underestimate Letters of Recommendation.
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And the counselor letter if a school accepts that.
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Road2College lists these components of a school profile:
- Contact Details such as the school mailing address, email, phone and fax number, and the College Entrance Examination Board (CEEB) code
- Community Details such as the school location (including distance to a city)
- Demographics such as the race and socioeconomic background of the student body, the percentage of students who are first-generation college students, and the percentage of students who participate in low-income programs
- College Attendance/Post-Secondary Plans of students such as the graduation rate, percentage of students going into two- and four-year colleges, and a list of colleges attended by recent graduates
- Extracurricular Activities such as clubs, organizations, and sports offered at the high school
- Curriculum Information such as the sequencing of classes, various tracks, the specific AP or honor courses available and their entrance requirements, all courses that are available, and graduation requirements
- Grading/Ranking/GPA details including procedures like weighting system used in calculating GPA and what each grade letter equates to as a percentage range
- Test Score Details including SAT, ACT, and AP scores or ranges for the previous graduating class
- Any pertinent information that distinguishes the school from others
- Any changes or updates that were made
Hereâs a sample school profile from the College Board:
I was just reviewing a CDS for a top private. Only 15% of kids had a rank. Itâs in the ranking table section C 10.
Zero to worry about.
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My sonsâ private high school does not rank and every year kids get into highly selective schools. Just the past few years Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Yale, Cal Tech. Many kids also attend state public universities. Your private school guidance counselor will know how to phrase their recommendation letter so colleges know how your child compares to their peers in terms of rigor and gpa.
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Zero stressâŠ
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So in that sample school profile, there is a section showing how many students fell into each GPA bucket:
There were 365 graduates in the Class of 2021.
- 36 earned a 4.0+
- 50 earned 3.5â3.99
- 100 earned 3.0â3.49
- 100 earned 2.50â2.99
- 75 earned 2.0â2.49
- 4 earned less than a 2.0
Our school doesnât rank, and our school profile also doesnât include a GPA distribution like this. Itâs not possible to calculate class rank, or class decile, etc., from comparing an individual kidâs record to our school profile.
I just want to reiterate for the purposes of this thread that this doesnât harm our kids when applying to top-tier schools. We have kids at all the top schools every year.
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One reason your HS may have eliminated it is because it signals the wrong thing: right now, competitive/academic schools do not rank, only low-performing ones do (because there IS a significant difference between #1 and #7 and #15 at a HS where only 5 students enroll in calculus and only 12 reached precalculus by 12th grade - real example).
Second, school ranks make students focus on the wrong thing, since either theyâre decided by decimals (ie., meaningless differences) or shared between 5 or 10 or more students. Colleges see val/sal as little more than a chocolate medal, invented for the era when most kids didnât go to college and itâd be their crowning academic achievement. Competing for that chocolate medal is not what colleges want and so many kids or families tried to âgameâ the ranking that it stopped being a metric at all. Thatâs why there are so many vals who are angry or hurt when #4 gets into the valâs top school and they donât - they forgot that #2 is not necessarily âbetterâ than #3 as far as selective colleges go.
Even in Texas, what matters is âtop 6%â and âTop 20%â not a specific rank - and thatâs assuming comprehensive public high school, not private HS.
As for schools that admit based on a specific rank or provide scholarships based on a specific rank (usually val/sal), they tend to be minimally selective, and fewer&fewer.
The expectation at very/highly selective colleges is that students meet a rigor and results benchmark in relation to their HSâs offering and general profile.
So, what matters is the school profile.
Once that benchmark has been met, other factors come in.
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Perhaps not for you and your students and thatâs great, but for a lot of competitive students who constantly compare themselves to others, it can cause significant stress both to maintain a certain rank as well as when their rank falls. There are some serious mental health issues plaguing teens right now and so much of it comes through comparing themselves to others - either looks, wealth, friends, or something like class rank. We canât take it all away, but class rank is an easy stress source to eliminate as it ultimately affects either very little or nothing at all.
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