<p>“I meant to type 2250+.”</p>
<p>Thanks for clarifying. For a minute there I thought they’d gotten a 250 point boost for taking the Honors version of the SAT.</p>
<p>I was on the SCOTUS blog. The FAQ was informative. I wonder what it could mean that Fisher is the oldest case out there without an opinion.</p>
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<p>It probably means they’re having a hard time reaching a majority and there’s a lot of negotiating going on, trying to line up a 5th vote. Could be 4-4, or it could be 4-1-3 with Kennedy off on one of his idiosyncratic concurrences. As much as the Chief Justice dislikes 5-4 decisions on controversial issues, I don’t think he’d be happy with a decision that made significant changes in something as controversial as affirmative action with only 4 votes (in a 4-1-3 alignment).</p>
<p>Or, maybe they are planning to make sweeping changes and are just being extra cautious in putting the finishing touches on the opinion. I think more likely the former, though.</p>
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<p>Fwiw, I hope it is clear that there is a difference between a school that reports the top quartile as its top 25 percent, and one that might not rank but report with sufficient granularity than one can identify the … top four kids. </p>
<p>In my example, the school REFUSED to confirm any specific ranking until 15 days before graduation (meaning May.) All the GC could do was report students by quartile. When the adcom of UT visited the school, she insisted in bringing changes. She understood well the HS since she was an alumni of the HS. The GC could not defy the school policies, although she sat on a detailed ranking. Without going in details, my sister was a student helper in the GC office and knew she was either val or sal because that is the way the GC selected her assistants. Not that it would be hard to figure out by comparing GPAs on the transcripts! The students knew the exact order better than the GC. </p>
<p>The real issue is how the information is reported. For the ten percent rule, the ranking has to be official. Private schools might accept an “unofficial” mention such as “this student will be ranked on the TOP of the class” to share that the student will be the valedictorian. </p>
<p>As I wrote, people who understand the importance of the ranking (top 1-3 percent) also know what it takes to submit the most detailed application possible. The sad part is nobody should have to rely on extra shenanigans. </p>
<p>Playing games with the rankings is rarely beneficial to the students.</p>
<p>You can do better by not reporting rank if you are in that group of schools that can get away with it. A lot of the top independent school and top high schools refuse to rank the kids. The top schools, yes, MIT, HPY, accept this from those schools that feed exceptional students and use a revised class rank schedule. it really makes sense that way. At some such schools where the kids are preselected through a process and the average SATs at the schools are higher than those at 90% of all colleges, you know that ranking that select group of kids gets to be ridiculous. Also if the school refuses to weight the courses, you are going to have an awful lot of kids with the same gpa and ranking because an issue. So for such schools the top gun colleges bite the bullet and give more than the top 5% a 5% ranking.</p>
<p>Yeah, not every school would want to go that route, but for those schools with a high-achieving student body it’s worth considering.</p>
<p>xiggi, that system sounds awful and IS hurting the top kids.</p>
<p>I like TAMU’s allowance for students in the top 25%. If you achieve an SAT score of at least 1300 (CR +M), with at least 600 in each; or a composite ACT score of at least 30 with a tscore of at least 27 in ACT Math and ACT English, then you’re in.</p>
<p>This helps address the problem of highly “competitive” high schools.</p>
<p>Me, too, cromette, which is why at A&M we wanted his rank reported. He qualified under that academic admit program.</p>
<p>One of the top private schools in Houston does not rank. I am not certain what they pass on to State schools. 11 out of 130-140 students are going to Rice.</p>
<p>Regarding the non-ranking HS in Texas, I think this past discussion is illuminating:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/138506-how-do-schools-deal-no-class-rank.html#post1695178[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/138506-how-do-schools-deal-no-class-rank.html#post1695178</a></p>
<p>Take a look at the last posts in that thread. Astute readers of this forum now know that the school is St Marks in Dallas, and that I was a close compadre of Eason who went on to an extremely successful career after turning down Yale. You have a situation where there is non-ranking of the Class, but plenty of information including a quasi ranking for each class taken. Adcoms are hardly blind in terms “ranking!”</p>
<p>The above discussion also serves as reference for the discussion about the top 10 percent’s impact on a school such as St Marks when one class gets as many admissions to Yale as the number of its top percent. And this was for the Yale’s Class of 2008 – a year known as the disaster year for CC parents.</p>
<p>FWIW, I went to one of the aforementioned “elite” (and huge!) Texas public high schools and was in the top 10% of my HS class (actually top 2%). My brother graduated two years earlier than me, right before they started weighting GPAs. Before they weighted GPAs, the ranking system was honestly a complete mess, with students taking classes below their academic level so that they could almost guarantee A’s, and the top 10% consisting almost entirely of 4.0s. Once they instituted weighted GPAs, the system worked out much better, IMO, and generally rewarded the kids who took a lot of AP and honors classes and did well. There were some imperfections, of course (being “punished” for taking sports or foreign languages without an APA option), but in general, I think the system worked well in representing the “top” students in my class. And yes, many people did aspire to the top 10% <em>solely</em> for A&M and UT, and you know what? They’ve done pretty well post-college.</p>
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<p>I agree. In addition, NMFs are auto admits regardless of class rank, so I think A&M is quite good that way.</p>
<p>At St. Mark’s, you could be middle of the pack and still be absolutely stellar in terms of grades and stats. I could not believe how many NMFs, semi-finalists, and commended students they had one year.</p>
<p>^^</p>
<p>and that is why the top 10 percent rule is irrelevant around Preston Road in the 75230 zip code. The debates are raging in the 75205 version, and in the suburbs. </p>
<p>Also, there is such an academic difference between Abigail Fisher and the middle of the pack at St Marks that they could be on different planets.</p>
<p>At my D’s school, ranking is based on weighted gpa. Dual, AP, Pre-AP all get the heaviest weight. Advanced gets next, regular and then modified. Within the Dual/AP/Pre-AP ranks, there is very little opportunity to “boost” your gpa above other similar students because of the stringent course work required - there is just little room left for electives, especially if you’re in band, choir or athletics, which most of the advanced students are. I like the way they do the ranking. I think it’s fair. D graduated 15th in her class. I think it was a fair representation.</p>
<p>Has anyone in TX sued [yet] over methodology for determining class rank?</p>
<p>Why would they sue? It is not like they don’t know how the school determines their rank.</p>
<p>I did hear that a school district in Austin changed their policy in counting summer classes taken outside of school district to count for rank because someone took 4 or so classes in summer and waltzed ahead of a bunch of people to become valedictorian.</p>
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<p>True. Probably even true for the lower percentage of any St. Marks class.</p>
<p>Texaspg, I think our school won’t count classes that go BEYOND the required course-load. So you can take the dual Science class in the summer if you want to, but that means you lose an elective later on. They only count the correct number of classes. If your elective happens to be your required fine arts elective or your required PE elective, then guess what? You don’t get credit for that dual science class.</p>
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<p>I’m curious about the racial mix of the top% kids at the more academically competitive/higher SES schools. The methodology for determining class rank may be transparent, but its effect may have a disparate effect on some demographic groups at these schools.</p>
<p>Just the fact that the schools keep tinkering with the ranking methodology suggests there are a lot of complaints about fairness of the methodology.</p>