<p>There was a plan, a while back, to not only issue grades but also rankings in terms of where in the class someone was. So, for example, you could get a B, but if you were the best in the class, you would get a (1) as well. The rankings were to be used for what was to be called an "Achievement Index," and the higher the collective AI of the course and the better your performance in it, the better your AI would end up being as a result. There's actually a cool paper on it at [url=<a href="http://www.unc.edu/%7Epcg/grading/AIPrimer.pdf%5DUNC%5B/url">http://www.unc.edu/~pcg/grading/AIPrimer.pdf]UNC[/url</a>] - though this version seems to rank solely based on the grade distribution within the class.</p>
<p>I can't even IMAGINE how irritated I would be having to field questions about the relative ranking of multiple people with the same letter grade...</p>