Just curious how other schools calculate class rank. Our school does not officially have class rank, but they do calculate it for purposes of Cum Laude Society and I think they may give it out if a college asks for it. Ours is based on unweighted GPA, which seems odd. It rewards students heavy in the arts, those who needed to meet a PE requirement (multisport athletes get a waiver) or who choose more friendly graded courses, while seemingly penalizing students who take the most rigorous course load available. Not a huge deal, but I know many colleges do give weight to class rank. I was reminded of it today when the National Merit Finalist were announced. Ten percent of the class are NMF (fantastic!), but only ONE of the NMF were in the top 10 percent for class rank based on junior year Cum Laude Society. Seems strange. Glad class rank seems to be declining in importance, as it seems so relative.
Our school does not rank, in part for all the issues you raised. If you use weighted, it discourages students from branching out and taking an art class. If you use unweighted it discourages taking more difficult classes. It causes students to be cutthroat towards each other and see their value as a number. We specifically chose to move to a school district that did not weight. They insist that they will not give out any rankings even if colleges ask for them. If they ever change this policy, I will move.
Same here. While my HS also does not rank, it does do deciles for the school profile.
No waivers for us; everyone took PE, but it was graded P/F, so no impact on GPA (unless you fail). The balance of classes was devoid of automotive technology and the like, so it was a bit hard to do a schedule totally lacking in easy courses. An easy grading teacher though would have no impact if the GPA were weighted or unweighted.
DD’s school used weighted GPA for rank calculations but even that had it’s drawback because they didn’t differentiate between honors and AP course weights. Lots of students played the ranking game. Our top 20 in ranking didn’t match up that well with our academic honors students (98th percentile for standardized tests and highest honors all semesters). 50% of the top 20 in ranking were not part of academic honors.
The flip side for those students just going for pure ranking was that they were penalized with not getting the “highest course rigor” box checked by the GC. That was ultimately a big miss because the school didn’t report rank outside of saying top 10% unless it was the #1 or 2.
There were only 6 students out of 200+ that had the “most rigorous” box checked.
@gallentjill That is interesting. I have mixed feeling about it. I agree that discouraging branching out is a very bad thing, but it also seems strange to me to be seeing the bulk of students comprising the top 10 percent (based on junior year Cum Laude Society) being wonderful kids, who are super interesting and have a lot to offer, but have CLEARLY not taken a very rigorous course load. At our school the most rigorous classes are graded pretty harshly, which I have no problem with, but it just feels weird to see the disparity between the “Top 10 percent” and the NMF types. I guess in one way, everyone gets something, which is nice. I do think about it though as it relates to college admissions.
@momofsenior1. Did you ask the GC about what rigor box was checked? I have always wondered if that is an appropriate question. Also, the problem at our school seems to be that even if they just report to colleges “top 10%” that penalizes many kids. Like I said we had 8 NMF this year and only one of them was technically in the top 10% but all most certainly got a check in the rigor box. I guess I wish colleges would do away with that as a evaluation criterial completely.
We give weighted and unweighted gpa on transcript as well as rank. Regular class 4.0=A, Honors 4.5=A, AP 5.0=A. No minuses, plusses are worth .2. So A+ is 4.2 in regular class, 4.7 Honors, 5.2 AP. PLTW classes are not weighted, which in my opinion hurts those kids because at our school they are taught to at least the level of Honors if not AP, and graded accordingly. You are limited to 4 AP classes per year. Freshmen get none, 2-3 sophomores a year take human geography to get 2 otherwise they just get 1. No limit on honors, but pretty much all the kids interested in AP take pretty much all of the honors classes.
They don’t put rank on the transcript until after sophomore year. The internal transcripts they gave the freshmen when signing up for classes this spring had rank on them. The kids were all told that they couldn’t take the transcripts home. So they did what any 14-15 year old would do – they took a picture. Then they all compared. I’m pretty sure daughter could tell you most of the top 10 in her class.
The top 2% of the class is listed as #1 class rank when the transcripts are released outside the school. So for a class of 350, that means kids 1-7 get a rank of #1, with the #8 kid getting #8, #9 gets #9 and so on. I don’t think there is a way for schools to know if a kid is really #1 or #5. There isn’t a way for the students to know, and I don’t think the GC’s are very forthcoming with that level of detail either. I’m guessing that practice is helpful if you are the only student applying to a particular school, but harmful if 2 or 3 of you apply to the same place. I was told by an assistant principal that this is a fairly common practice, at least in our state.
@momofsenior1 you are making me worry about the rigor box. I can’t imaging my kids aren’t getting that checked, but I really should ask what goes into it.
Our district does weighted and on a 100 point scale. Only AP carries extra weight of 10 points. And Dual classes are not included as they are graded by the local CC. It does drive competition but that is not a bad thing IMO. All of the top 10 and top 3-5% would definitely qualify for most rigorous check if that was a thing in Texas. Top 6% is big for auto admit to UT Austin and top 10% for all other state schools. They are changing this going forward to not focus on rankings and I am glad my kids will be out before that change happens. The district wants to “reduce stress” and allow for more “exploring”. Offer more weighted options in challenging courses and don’t penalize athletes, arts students, and all required CTE (career education) with max 100 points and the problems with kids dropping the sports classes or band/music would stop.
I guess I am probably in the minority but my kids have thrived on the challenge of HS and I did as well. I think it prepares them for the reality that is awaiting them in college and into the future in their careers. I see them as young adults who are learning to interact in a very competitive real world and some healthy competition is a positive thing.
Our GC met with all students and parents junior year and let us know the “rigor” threshold. For DD’s HS it was 15-18 Honors/AP courses with a certain number being AP. We had 7 courses max per semester, 1 was a mandatory theology course for all four years with no weighting, and there were other grad requirements that weren’t weighted (fine arts, PE, etc…) so the max any student could take over the course of HS was 18.
I don’t know this for certain but I got the sense that they waited to disclose that information until junior year because they didn’t want parents fighting for their kids to get into honors/AP courses (it was fully by grade and teacher recommendation only). It was bad enough freshman year when parents went ballistic because the school placed students based on an entrance exam.
This is our policy for ranking
Red Bay High Scchool Senior Ranking
- The four year grade average of each senior will include weighted semester grades of 1.10 for the following classes:
Spanish II, Algebra2, Anatomy, Chemistry, Physics, and Pre-Calculus.
Classes which have a tutition fee from a college, correspondence class, dualenrollment, or summer school class will not be weighted. - Grades for Teaacher Aide will not be computed.
- The wieghted averages will not be placed on the transcript. The weighted avarage will be used forranking and the GPA sent out for scholarships.
- Students must have attended Red Bay High School for their junior and senior years of High School to be eligible for the Valedictorian or Saalutatorian honor for their graduating class.
It is a numerical grade average(out of 100) and I believe they only allow one p.e./sport/band etc. type of credit in the calculation.
Our high school ranks using weighted courses, but it only ranks based on the “academic” courses". There were some funky things - Latin did not have honors before level 4, but all the other classes did - the excuse was there weren’t enough students to make a separate honors section - so automatically anyone who chose Latin in 7th grade got dinged. (And no one was telling us this stuff!) I never could figure out what was considered an academic course for my younger son - I ran his grades through an Excel spread sheet and never got the same GPA the school got - I think they may have given some weight to the honors orchestra he was in. It seemed reasonably fair - I don’t know of any academic type kids besides my oldest son who didn’t also do music or art or dance or theater. There was a very popular extra arts program that gave you an extra designation on the diploma and lots of kids did it.
Oh my, so what is this rigor box thing? Is this something most school’s gc’s use for college applications? Our school ranks based on weighted GPA.
Rank based strictly on weighted GPA, all courses included, with “ties” all listed on the same rank (so 5 students might all be listed as 10th, with the next student listed at 15th). Only AP course are weighted, honors and dual-enrollment receive no extra weight. DE is only approved when student has exhausted courses in the subject at the school, so I guess they consider it the student’s “level,” therefore not worthy of weighting. With a semester-based block schedule and most APs set as full-year courses, weighted courses are difficult to fit in so to get to the very top students have to be willing to play the AP/rank game. Mine managed to finish top-10% and top 5% without playing, with just 3 APs each. Local school doesn’t send many to the super-elites and neither of mine targeted there, so no idea how this translates to the “rigor” checkbox.
My son’s year there were 3 NMFs, none of which were in the “top” echelon recognized in graduation program. That recognition was gone when my daughter graduated this year.
Our is/was a formula comprised of unweighted gpa plus SAT score + an adjustment for any of the classes designated most rigorous. They aren’t rank ordered but the top 10% are designated “scholars.”
@EENYMum - When guidance counselors send in the school report and transcripts to colleges, they will indicate the level of course rigor. From reading posts on CCs, this varies greatly high school to high school. My daughter’s school was very strict on what was considered “highest course rigor”. Other people have posted that almost everyone got that designation at their child’s schools. Some schools GCs are very transparent about the criteria, other will not disclose to students/parents.
D21’s school does not rank - no published honor rolls, no nothing. GPA is only reported weighted. They sent a large packet to colleges that includes a chart with weighted GPA in groups (4.0+; 3.5-3.99, etc) and the percent of the class in each category. The college can infer from that where each student lands.
S17 went to a different, less competitive public. Class rank was based on weighted GPA on a 100 point scale. BUT colleges were told they don’t rank. Students could request to have it reported, and guidance would. Otherwise colleges are told the school doesn’t rank.
I asked the rigor question to my daughter’s guidance counselor and was told they don’t check any boxes. This makes the AO’s read the GC comments.
Her school also doesn’t rank. They also won’t allow AP’s until Junior year and the student must get permission from teachers of prerequisites.
Needless to say this is a private school of 100 students/grade but it hasn’t impacted their college placement. This year 14% of her class are NMSF and they send more kids to Duke (with a nearly 50% acceptance rate) each year than any other school in the US.
All of this variability makes me have some sympathy for the AO!
DD’s school gives both weighted and unweighted grades to colleges. They haven’t ranked in a few years because kids were coming in hundredths of a point apart. It was also easy to game because AP and honors are weighted the same, even though AP is considered harder. A boost of .22 is added to the GPA for each of those classes. Dual Enrollments are not weighted (except for multivariable calculus), which could hurt DD, but she is getting so much more from those classes that they’re worth it anyway.
There are lots of requirements. Recently the school combined health and gym (all four years), which is good because it cut one requirement, but bad because, starting this year, they’re counting gym in the GPA. So basically everyone is getting a GPA boost which feels like grade inflation, and colleges probably count out gym when they do their own equalizations anyway.
OP, my kids’ school is just like yours - cum laude is decided solely on unweighted GPA, (although PE for us is pass/fail) and the school does not provide GPA or class rank information on the transcript. Each year, the junior year selections include a few kids from the tough classes, and many that never took an AP or honors course. Neither of my kids were selected for cum laude junior year and both were pretty bitter about it, as they took all of the hardest classes offered and still made good grades. It all seems to shake out in the end - the college acceptances in DD’s class seemed to correlate more with the rigor of the classes taken than with selection to cum laude.