Devaluing of Class Rank ... A Good Move? Alternatives?

Applying to College
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<p>Here's an interesting (well, sort of) Chronicle of Higher Ed article on how class rank is losing traction in the admissions process: Class</a> Rank: Slippery Metric, on the Wane - Students - The Chronicle of Higher Education </p>

<p>Personally, I have never been a fan of ranking students and have occasionally butted heads with the admission insiders who insist that eliminating rank entirely is just another way to dumb-down American education or is yet another example of the burgeoning “Everybody gets a trophy” syndrome (which I, too, deplore).</p>

<p>What actually worked well for me when I read application folders at Smith was the (very) small handful of high schools that sent some sort of scattergram for every grade the candidate had received in every class she took (at least in junior and senior years … typically not before). This way, admission officers could quickly see that a 94 in math was the top grade in the section, while the 94 in history was more in the middle of the pack. I’m suspect that admission folks at big universities would jump off a ledge if every high school sent scattergrams for every student’s every class. But I found these graphs enormously helpful. They conveyed much more useful information than a transcript alone and certainly more than an overall rank provided.</p>

<p>Today, 15+ years later, from a parent’s perspective, I find the idea of scattergrams even more valuable. Now it’s my own kid who might be leading his class with that 94. He’s only a high school sophomore and yet already I can see the radical differences in the grading styles among the teachers he’s had so far.</p>

<p>So my vote … probably just a cry in the wilderness … would be to eliminate class rank but, instead, to let the colleges see where each junior and senior report card grade falls in the context of the class that it comes from.</p>

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<p>I think class rank is only meaningful when you compare within a school or at least very similar schools. Getting an A average at some is equivalent to a B or even C average at other, more demanding schools.</p>

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<p>AeroMike–Very true, and the Chronicle article does mention the fallacies of comparing rank at one school with that at another.</p>

<p>But even within a high school, I’ve always found that ranking students causes more harm than good. Commonly there are only fractions of points that may separate #1 from #10. And those differences can be based on the fact that Jonah got the “easy” teacher for calculus, the one who hands out 100’s liberally, while Jared got the “hard” teacher who thinks that a 95 means perfection (ergo the value of scattergrams!)</p>

<p>Moreover, at schools that provide an exact rank, students are likely to pass up classes they want to take but which are not “weighted” (e.g., art, music) in order to opt for more honors and AP classes for the sole purpose of jacking up the rank. Or, even worse, it’s the parents who insist that Junior skip the sculpture class he’s been waiting three years to take because it won’t help his rank as much as AP Stats will.</p>

<p>Finally, this seems counterintuitive to most of us, but at some high schools, a student who gets straight A’s in 8 classes will have a lower rank than one who gets straight A’s in 5 classes. It depends on how the school computes the rank. </p>

<p>For example, let’s say that Sophie is taking 5 AP classes and has an A in all of them. She is also taking 3 electives … ceramics, psychology, and band. She has an A in all of those too. Her school weights the AP classes in such a way that her A’s in those courses are worth 5 points. But her A’s in the 3 unweighted electives are worth only 4 points. So her GPA is computed by adding up all her grades (25 points for the 5 AP classes and 12 points for the 3 electives, for a total of 37 points). Now divide that by 8–the number of classes she’s taking–and her GPA for the term is 4.6. Not too shabby, right?</p>

<p>But, meanwhile, her best friend, Sarah, is taking the exact same AP load that Sophie is taking and also earning A’s in all classes. But Sarah is not in any elective classes, preferring to use the extra time to study for her AP’s. So Sarah’s GPA is 5.0 (25 points for her 5 AP’s, divided by 5.) </p>

<p>If their high school ranks the students, Sarah could end up well above Sophie. :eek:</p>

<p>Some high schools mitigate this problem by only including the “solid” subjects in the class rank or by doing other workarounds. But many school administrators just shrug instead and say, “It is what it is.” </p>

<p>So what it really is is another reason why I hate class rank!</p>

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<p>Behind the Chronicle paywall so I can’t read before commenting…I’m wondering if this isn’t already a somewhat moot point because savvier high schools, seeing that rank ends up hurting their students in college admissions, don’t rank. </p>

<p>The scattergram is a great idea in a perfect world. I redid the school profile for D1’s entry-by-test public magnet a few years back, and I suggested to the counseling staff that we include that kind of tallying up of grades. No dice. The school staff simply didn’t have the time and resources to collect that kind of info. </p>

<p>Thinking about where ranking "matters, I can come up with a few scenarios. For admission to the tippy-top schools, being a val or sal seems to matter. Ditto for being in the top 10% for most selective schools. Makes some sense if you’re looking at some random large public high school, maybe not so much when considering Thomas Jefferson or Harvard-Westlake. And being top 10% or 8% or 4% or whatever makes a difference for admission to some public schools and/or some merit-based scholarships.</p>

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<p>Oops … sorry. It looked like one of the freebie articles to me but maybe that’s because the Chronicle remembers my user name and password (a darn good thing, too, because I sure can’t remember them myself! :wink: )</p>

<p>Send me a PM if you want me to email it to you.</p>

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<p>A couple of ideas re Rank:</p>

<p>First – don’t report rank, but perhaps give the cut off for each decile. So, in other words, the school could report that Jane’s GPA is 3.87 and that the cut off for top 10% is 3.89. The schools would know that Jane is just out of the top 10% but that the difference is not terribly significant. This, to my mind provides more meaningful information than saying that Jane was 34 out of 397.</p>

<p>Second – Limit the amount of weight for any student. For example – a common approach for weighting is to give one point for each honors/ap course. Let’s assume that all courses are one credit courses – what if we say that a student will get one point for honors/ap courses, but no more than 3 points total in any semester. Given that strength of schedule is important, the students applying to the most selective schools would probably take more than 3 honors courses anyway. However, if, say someone wanted to take an occasional non Honors course because of interest, they would not be penalized.</p>

<p>Final thought – we always supported our kids when they wanted to take this occasional course just because of interest. When we were doing the college tours for my youngest, I asked a few admissions officers about this (using a digital photography course my D had taken as an example). Everyone I talked to said that this wasn’t a problem – that most rigorous schedule didn’t mean never take a non-honors course and many said that seeing something like this on a transcript might indicate a more well-rounded candidate and could be a plus. So, there may be a misconception in general about what colleges are looking for.</p>

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So what you advocate is actually rank within each class rather than class rank? ;)</p>

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<p>LOL! But it’s actually more like the “One picture’s worth 1,000 words” approach. Instead of simply eyeballing the grade on a transcript, the admission folks get to see a little red dot that might be a good quarter inch above the gaggle of other dots or maybe smack in the middle of the cluster (or well below it :frowning: )</p>

<p>Even from my own school days many moons ago, I remember the discrepancies among teachers. My French teacher, for instance, who was actually French herself, thought that “C” meant that you were doing the level of work that you were supposed to do, and thus it was the grade that went to only the best students because she felt that everyone else wasn’t doing enough. My friends who had the American teacher down the hall were mostly getting A’s and doing a fraction of the work that we were.</p>

<p>Of course, I did eventually figure out that I actually learned to speak French in that class, which has benefited me for much of my adult life, but back when I was a teenager it did seem unfair to see such a discrepancy in the ways that grades were awarded. And it certainly makes me empathize with all the kids today who write me “Ask the Dean” questions that ask things like, “How will colleges know that almost no one gets above a ‘B’ from Mr. Snodgrass?”</p>

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<p>My first foray into the world of college admissions was to start a task force in my town investigating class rank at our local high school…this was 10 years ago…and I gave up after being thrown out of the HS principal’s office…too long a story and don’t want to divulge on a public forum, but suffice it to say that everything posted here by others has been acknowledged over and over again in education circles…</p>

<p>The question still remains as to whether colleges prefer unranked candidates because it avoids them from having to “report class rank”…(the Emory/GWU conundrum)…</p>

<p>Way back then, the argument given to me to keep it was that colleges told our guidance office that they prefered to see students WITH an exact class rank (I didn’t buy it then and I certainly don’t buy it now, but I no longer have a stake in the game)…</p>

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<p>For example, let’s say that Sophie is taking 5 AP classes and has an A in all of them. She is also taking 3 electives … ceramics, psychology, and band. She has an A in all of those too. Her school weights the AP classes in such a way that her A’s in those courses are worth 5 points. But her A’s in the 3 unweighted electives are worth only 4 points. So her GPA is computed by adding up all her grades (25 points for the 5 AP classes and 12 points for the 3 electives, for a total of 37 points). Now divide that by 8–the number of classes she’s taking–and her GPA for the term is 4.6. Not too shabby, right?</p>

<p>*But, meanwhile, her best friend, Sarah, is taking the exact same AP load that Sophie is taking and also earning A’s in all classes. But Sarah is not in any elective classes, preferring to use the extra time to study for her AP’s. So Sarah’s GPA is 5.0 (25 points for her 5 AP’s, divided by 5.)</p>

<p>If their high school ranks the students, Sarah could end up well above Sophie.*</p>

<p>OP, this is exactly what is happening with my D, the “Sophie” in this scenario. She is also being “penalized” (even though she got an A) for taking the mandatory PE classes over the summer to make way for other classes - they figure into her rank as well. Apparently the more savvy students are waiting until senior year, second semester, to take that class so it won’t impact their rank - same with a mandatory health class. It’s maddening.</p>

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<p>My impression is that a majority of high schools do not send class rank to colleges. By itself, this would seem to invalidate using rank in the admissions decision. </p>

<p>I know there is some estimating that adcoms do based the information they receive from high schools, but this approach seems to work strongly to the advantage of schools that know how to game the estimation system.</p>

<p>Is a student’s selection of high school more important than how they perform in school? For highly competitive students, this would seem to be the case.</p>

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<p>Re: #3 and #10 where taking additional non-weighted courses lowers GPA for class rank</p>

<p>That is why high schools that do class rank should use grade points, not grade point averages (they could give non-academic courses reduced weight if desired, but it would still be a plus to take such a course as an additional course over having no course in that slot).</p>

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<p>I agree with everything Sally said. There are thousands of different ways to compute class rank and thousands of different ways to game it as the Sophie and Sarah scenario shows. </p>

<p>One of my gripes with class rank is that the differences between each rank can be minuscule, maybe 1/1000 th of a point. Small differences can also separate each decile. In small schools these differences can be magnified and can make the difference between being in the top ten percent or not. Does anyone really think that a student with a 4.387 is a better student than one with a 4.367? Maybe the difference is from having the “hard” teacher for biology or maybe it’s because a kid got a low grade on one test in freshman year</p>

<p>I’d prefer to see class rank dropped (as many schools do) and have schools provide context. Maybe the range of GPA’s in each decile? In addition, find ways to avoid the Sophie and Sarah situation</p>

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<p>I disagree! It is important to be well rounded, and that wouldn’t be recognized under your system. You would get people who focus all of their energy on one subject at the top ranks.</p>

<p>Sincerely,
a Salutatorian</p>

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<p>My dd’s school does not rank but publishes a “profile” that has the number of students in each GPA range - so her class has 175 kids and only 15 have a 4.4 or above - you know you are in the top 9%. The guidance counselors have said if there is an ABSOLUTE reason that a college needs the rank or exact decile they will provide it (usually for scholarships). This is a school that all the students had to test to get into. It seems to not hurt the students in entry into top schools.</p>

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<p>If my kid ranks in the top 10% of his/her class, then class rank is a very important factor in the college admissions process. But, if my kid ranks below median, then class rank is a foolish indicator showing how poorly the teachers teach.</p>

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<p>What if you just gave the percent breakdown of letter grades? For example, on your transcript it’d read</p>

<p>Math: A
Distribution: 30% A - 20% B - 40% C - 10% D</p>

<p>IMO a scattergram is way to competitive and is sending the wrong message to kids. Lets say 5 students are applying to the same college in a class. If they knew that one-upping their peers on the scattergram would give them an advantage, there’d be intense competition. In essence, all it’d be doing is centralizing competition to intra-class.</p>

<p>A general distribution would be a lot looser (i.e. students wouldn’t be forced to take it as seriously). I agree that class rank (even within the same school) can be arbitrary, but I don’t think scattergrams are the answer.</p>

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<p>Cc123sb makes a good point… Scattergrams would probably cause cheating and sleep loss among the most competitive students…=P</p>

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<p>I never had a school-wide class rank; what I had, instead of a class rank, worked more like a scattergram than a class rank.</p>

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<p>My issue with class rank developed after I spent half a year studying abroad my sophomore year. I didn’t know it at the time, but my school computes class rank based on GPA and Amount of Classes Taken. Therefore, even though I have a 3.9, I’m ranked 163 because I’m missing a lot of credits from when I studied abroad. People with 3.4s are ranked above me, which is ridiculous considering the amount of APs I’ve taken. Also, if someone takes summer school, they can get a better class rank. So I basically got screwed for taking an amazing opportunity.</p>