<p>My sil was #2 instead of #1 because she did orchestra on top of a full schedule. She got an A in it, but since it was unweighted her GPA was less than the val who was taking fewer classes. Pretty stupid.</p>
<p>Yes, it is stupid. But… there probably is no method that is fair to everybody. It is what it is. </p>
<p>It’s extremely stupid to make distinctions between academic performances based on whether one took study hall and the other took a PE class. I would think that admissions officers are well aware of the fact that ranking systems don’t make much sense when grades are so inflated that silly things like this will change the rank and that kids who are reasonably close in rank can be considered the same. </p>
<p>Many schools don’t use ordinal rankings anyhow, and the colleges seem to deal with that just fine. From what I’ve seen on this site, telling kids what number they are in their class and making some big deal about what are really meaningless distinctions does nothing but promote anxiety, unnecessary competitiveness, and a generally unpleasant high school atmosphere. It puts kids under a lot of pressure to compromise their educations chasing the person on the next rung of that silly ladder. I am very grateful that our school doesn’t subject the kids to this.</p>
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For my D, it was 4 yr of soccer plus choir that knocked her off 1st, 2nd but you know what, they have to weigh these classes. If not, students will take basket weaving and study hall and other sure 100 all 4 years to make Val.</p>
<p>^For me, basket weaving or any other art or crafts course would have been the one to destroy my GPA. Gym did enough damage!</p>
<p>I agree there’s no perfect way to do weighting though I generally prefer systems that only look at academic courses. My younger son actually had a higher ranking than he deserved because of being in two orchestra’s every year. Those unweighted A+'s were better than most of his other grades weighted. And I’ll note that while it still occasionally rankles my sil that she didn’t get to be val, she did get into Harvard. (Don’t know about her rival. 
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<p>DD has mentioned that if she had been in running for Val (she was not, even in the earlier/better years of hs) she would have sabotaged it to avoid the speech. </p>
<p>DS at one point only had 1 B, ranked about 15 (due to unweighted music classes). His buddy had more weighted classes and no music/arts… with 2 B’s he was ranked #2. We were ok with that. The fun part is the Val picked him to be her peer reviewer on the graduation speech. So he had a role in speech refinement and joke selection anyway 
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<p>My daughter was 1st out of 360 and was NOT the valedictorian. She started her senior year #1, slipped to #3 at the mid-year, and was #1 on her final transcript. Unfortunately for her, val and sal were determined at the mid-year. As far as colleges were concerned she was #1 as that was her rank when she applied early action. i don’t really think that it mattered anyway. So many schools don’t rank anymore, just state “top 10%”, etc.</p>
<p>Is there an ideal system? It seems that every high school does it a little differently, and at every high school kids and parents complain that it is “unfair” or that their kid “wouldn’t play the game,” no matter what the system. Fine. Except for in limited situations, the criteria is laid out a the start of high school and a student can pursue the goal, or not. There are dozens of variables involved that eventually lead to one student ending up with the #1 rank. Bottom line, the “winner” did some things along the way that the other students either couldn’t, or wouldn’t do. Congratulate them and move on since “it doesn’t mean anything anyway,” right?</p>
<p>I think that is why my D’s school does not do class rank. Too many students would be jockeying for top spots instead of getting the best high school experience. Out of her class of 125, over 10-12% go to the Ivies each year - mostly Yale, Harvard and Brown. All go to top ranked schools like Stanford, Bowdoin, Vassar, NYU, Amherst, Wash U, etc. I think adcoms know the schools they deal with and a #1 at a poorer performing school doesn’t mean as much as a kid from a high powered school that doesn’t rank with good grades. Is that fair? No. But from what I see, nothing in the college application and acceptance game is fair anyway.</p>
<p>My high school got rid of class rank in 1977 and looks like they still do not have it. Glad to see they stuck to that decision. Like Tperry1982, students go onto top colleges every year because adcoms know students who take the most challenging classes are strong candidates; they don’t need to see some single digit number next to the child’s name.</p>
<p>@Tperry1982 @SlackerMomMD I am sure you are both aware that not every student in the US has access to the same educational opportunities. Tens of thousands of kids will graduate from no name, poorly ranked high schools this year and many will still manage to get accepted into “top schools.” Since their schools don’t open doors, and adcoms can’t assume they are worthy merely by the school name at the top of the letterhead, they have to pry those doors open on their own. Distinguishing themselves as a top ranked student in their class is one way of doing that.</p>
<p>@planner03, that’s a fair point.</p>
<p>If the school ranks students, I would prefer the school just list deciles. Kids pretty much know the general pecking order. Knowing exact ranks seems to be the problem.</p>
<p>^^I recall a report of an elementary school that wanted to avoid the stigma of grouping kids into ability groups, so instead of level 1, 2, and 3, they called them the Blue Birds, the Robins, and the Cardinals. All the kids knew which group was which. </p>
<p>Kids are way too smart to ever get away with “hiding” how the students are divided into groups, lol! I am undecided on how I feel about ranking. My daughter did become obsessive at one point and really stressed herself out, but let it go in the end because applying and getting accepted to colleges became the priority. So although it sometimes causes undue stress, it also provides that extra motivation some kids need to do their very best. She really didn’t care that she wasn’t valedictorian, as long as her final transcript said #1 she “won” in her own eyes, and didn’t even have to make a speech! Besides, she really liked her classmates that were val and sal and felt they deserved the honors. If you are in the top 5% of your class, I don’t think it will really affect the outcome of which school you end up attending.</p>
<p>@Planner03 - I am well aware of that. I attended a public high school in a lower class part of town. I didn’t have the benefit of special SAT programs (didn’t even know they existed), a GC that gave a crap about me, fancy digs at school, abroad programs or anything else. I worked every summer so I didn’t do fancy enrichment programs. This was in the late 70’s.</p>
<p>Flash forward to now. I work with the Bill Gates’ College Success Foundation which gives $50,000 scholarships to deserving seniors from disadvantaged backgrounds. In Washington, DC, there are 6 schools eligible for these scholarships - one of them is the school I graduated from. I read their apps, and do interviews. And so I know first hand that there are STILL a large group of kids who do not have access to not only a top notch education, but some don’t have access to even an adequate one. </p>
<p>I know I am blessed to have been able to spend my last dollars to send my own kid to a top independent school and she is now at Yale as a freshman (which by the way does not rank). But I have not in the least forgotten where I came from and I work hard at finding other aspiring students to get into college, any college. HYPS is not even on their radar screen.</p>
<p>My final thought, being the number 1 student at a school that the adcoms know is substandard will not help them to know you can handle the work at a top college. What it will show them is the drive to succeed despite the shortcomings of the school and the environment. Sadly, sometimes that is not enough. I have seen and lived both sides of this coin.</p>
<p>D went (briefly) to a public elementary with such colors and creatures - the kids knew in a heartbeat which class was which. Elementary school kids are young, they’re not blind or ignorant. It was horrible because it stigmatized kids in lower groups and set a pecking order that lasted through high school. Worse, it told teachers in upper grades what to expect, rather than letting the teachers learn on their own (kids do change if they are given chances)</p>
<p>At my sons’ high school, the “developmental” classes all ended their class numbers in 33. Thus, folks might say of someone they perceived as a little dim as a “33er.”</p>
<p>@TPerry1982 “My final thought, being the number 1 student at a school that the adcoms know is substandard will not help them to know you can handle the work at a top college. What it will show them is the drive to succeed despite the shortcomings of the school and the environment. Sadly, sometimes that is not enough. I have seen and lived both sides of this coin.”
Perhaps that is where SAT/ACT/AP scores come in handy?</p>
<p>I hate to say that their scores may also not be up to par with the kids at the better schools. Luckily, most of the top schools use a holistic approach to admission so it is not always totally about numbers, scores, and grades. Sometimes they find a “diamond in the rough” who a teacher, counselor or someone says has the mental capacity to blossom at Yale despite the environment they come from. While this may not be the norm, it does happen.</p>