<p>Hi! I'm doing some research for our school newspaper, and was wondering what people here thought about class rank in high schools. Is it a good thing for schools to rank students in their class? Is it a good thing that colleges use this as a factor in admissions? Does your school rank? Do you like your school's policy about class rank? If your school does rank, do you feel as though it fosters unhealthy competition????</p>
<p>Any other comments or anecdotes or rants you have would be wonderful. I appreciate your responses!!!!</p>
<p>Rank is just another manipulative statistic that shouldn't be used to judge a student. Therefore, high schools shouldn't rank and colleges shouldn't consider it heavily. Thankfully, my school doesn't rank.</p>
<p>I feel like if my school DID rank we'd have counterproductive competition. Nobody would take orchestra, band, or choir because they'd bring your WGPA (and therefore rank) down. The school would have to either assign arbitrary classes as "honors" classes so that people would take them. Either that or let its music program (and others) suffer.</p>
<p>My school doesn't rank, and I prefer it that way. Not because I have a low GPA, but because students at the top of their class are sometimes separated by such small margins (e.g. 3.923 vs. 3.924). When students are striving to get that "98 in chemistry instead of a "94" for fear that their class rank will be disrupted, then things have gotten out of hand. Although, my school does rank to find out who the valedictorian and salutatorian are, but that's it--no rank is published on our college apps.</p>
<p>Although ranking does reveal how a student is performing in relation to their peers, it can be misleading when a school is extremely competitive. I suppose in moderately competitive schools, rank can be beneficial to those who are achieving well above their school's "standards."</p>
<p>I think that class rank is a fun thing to know and it does make some people work harder than they would otherwise, but I don't think that college admissions should rely heavily on it to evaluate a student. From the day I entered high school, I knew that it would be impossible for me to be Valedictorian because my GPA includes an Algebra I class that took in 8th grade and I got a B. Yeah, it sucks, but I learned a whole lot more in that Algebra I class than those who took Algebra I in high school. Some people get really worked up over class rank, but in my opinion, I don't think their seeing the whole picture. High school is about learning and while some colleges do take into consideration class rank, I would think that for the most part, it is to gauge how difficult and/or competitive a high school is. </p>
<p>As for the whole elective thing, I have taken Orchestra simply because I don't care about my rank as a whole. If colleges are going to look at me as a prospective student to their school, I want them to pick me on the basis that I am a well-rounded student, not that I took every AP test imaginable and have a 10.0 weighted GPA. Okay, so a 10.0 might be exaggerating a little bit, but in short, I've always kept on the stance that I want my days of high school to be productive and fun. Therefore, I don't get rid of the things that I like, such as orchestra, in order to cram as many AP classes as possible into my schedule to get the higher GPA and therefore attain the higher rank. Its a choice for each individual to decide. If they want to spend their high school days studying from sunrise to sunset, good for them. If they want to have fun and never study, well thats their choice.</p>
<p>my school does rank, and i like it. but i'm definitely biased because i'm ranked #1. there isn't really much competition at my school, though. so i wouldn't say it helps or hurts much. like, i know that the girl who is #2 hates me, but i think it's good that we have an established let's say, top 10. ranking helped us a lot in making college application decisions and such.</p>
<p>oh, and as an addition, people at my school (including myself) still take classes that they want to take even though they drag down gpa, like music, sewing class, crafts design, film study, etc. like i said, we're not cutthroat in competition despite the fact that my school ranks.</p>
<p>We don't rank, but if we did, I'd be around 3/670. A lot of the AP kids, including me, really wish that we did rank because it'd give us an advantage in college admissions, especially since we're at what is considered to be a competitive public school. I also really wish that the teachers would put A+'s on grades, because right now, a 94% looks the same as a 101%, which is really quite unfair. In addition, a person with straight A-'s can have a higher GPA than someone with straight A's except for a B+. The rest of the student body couldn't care less.</p>
<p>our school ranks, but doesnt weight gpas...so my gpa is pretty good (not amazing) and i have a lot of ib classes, but people who have 4.0s with 3 periods of PE are ranked ahead of me...im just out of the top 10% and there is this scholarship that is ONLY given out if you are ranked in the top 10% of your class, no exceptions, at this one college...</p>
<p>so ranking is stupid. at least at my school.</p>
<p>Class rank makes all the top students in my class paranoid. We're all hypocrites. We love guessing who'll end up being valedictorian/salutatorian, and we all flatter ourselves and think that we'll be the top 1 or 2. It's gotten to the point where some kids "keep track" of other kids' grades just so they can figure out whether they're ahead or not. Is the competition healthy? Maybe. But it also breeds paranoia and resentment.</p>
<p>I actually don't think my school calculates school rank except for determining valedictorian/salutatorian...</p>
<p>aww, well i'm sorry to hear that you're going to be stuck in competition hell for a little longer. my school isn't too competitive, so i can't really understand how you feel, but i can imagine.</p>
<p>I think class rank is a good thing. Even though i hear it creates paranoid students, people in my school are actually chill about it and dont fret to much. Also, my school is actually a pretty good school like second best public in MD so u would assume people would fight hard over it. I think its good because even though it is not perfect, it gives adcoms another indicator of wat a students abilities are and it emphasizes harder classes. Also, im not biased for this system cause my class rank sucks right now 58/405 but i still think its a good system.</p>
<p>Haha however(ranting part) i dont think the system is "perfect" cause im kinda a late bloomer and didnt really try that hard in my hs till this junior year. And i think im goin to get a 4.0 this year with hard classes(3 Ap) so ya maybe they should have a ranking for most improved? or junior year rank? Ok thats just dumb but that would make me look good. =/</p>
<p>Not to mention all the blatant cheating that goes on at my school. My school's really cracking down on it (especially plagiarism) this year, though, so that's a good thing. Some kid in last year's geometry class passed in a copy of his friend's math report...with the friend's name on it (he was obviously caught). He was also caught copying someone's notes (which were for homework) in history. He also supposedly bought a major paper instead of doing it himself. And he still insists on signing up for all AP courses. People in honors English classes have tried to plagiarize SparkNotes by copying and pasting. Someone in an AP English class last year attempted to plagiarize on a major paper. Ouch.</p>
<p>The more competitive it gets in the game, the worse the cheating.</p>
<p>Yeah... class rank is bad, bad, bad. haha. No but really, I'm soo glad my school doesn't rank. First off, it hurts kids at competitive schools so much more, because for instance, there are only 50 kids in my grade at my school. There aren't like 300 other kids who don't really care that much and aren't going to college, so even kids who are in the bottom half of our class are really, really smart. But, if we did the class rank thing, it would look horrible for the girls who are in the bottom part of the grade, even if they are exceptional students.
Another thing I have an issue with is the scholarships that require being in like the top 10% or whatever of your class, but you only need like a 1300 SAT or even lower sometimes. That's ridiculous. There are only 5 girls in the top 10% of my grade, but I bet at least 40 out of the 50 girls get at least a 1300 on the SAT.</p>