<p>Hey Sally_Rubenstone I was wondering if you could answer a question I had for a long time.</p>
<p>Apparently the issue about rank is such a huge deal. However, I am ranked 15/506 with a 3.98 GPA. I know that 15 is good, but I am not ranked 1 because a matter of 3 A-'s I have scattered throughout freshman/soph year. Will colleges not respect me in the same matter as someone that’s say, in the top 5? I find that ludicrous.</p>
<p>To NWdivisionCHAMPS: </p>
<p>You are well within the top decile of your class, so colleges will accord you tons of respect. Valedictorians have special appeal to the “elite” colleges because often their admission officials like to count them and boast about the big numbers. But the other number that admission folks like to brag about is the percentage of enrolled students who were in the top tenth of their high school class, and you easily qualify there.</p>
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<p>I agree, ctyankee, … well, mostly. The overall list of colleges is very broad and shows that students in this high school can see beyond the boundaries of their community, their state, and their region. Even this little bit of knowledge can be useful to admission officials because it suggests that the applicant comes from at least a somewhat sophisticated community. BUT … as you wisely point out, the list would be a lot more helpful if it also included the number of students enrolled in each institution and the period of time that the list covers. Does it report enrollment for just the last couple classes or does it span the entire history of the school? For instance, does this school typically send six kids to Stanford each September, or did one guy get in back in 1982? ;)</p>
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Why do you find it amusing? My school uses a similar procedure–no ranking at all, but GAP distribution is given. This allows differentiation by adcoms while removing the “competitive” aspect of ranking. One year the top GPA distribution (4.0+ weighted at my school, because our weighting only goes up to a theoretical max of 4.3) might be 13% of the class; the next year 17%. As long as you meet the absolute cutoff, you will be in the highest-“ranking” category.</p>
<p>What’s OP and adcom?</p>
<p>I know adcom is admissions office/officers and OP is the guy who started the thread but what do they stand for???</p>
<p>Literally:</p>
<p>adcom - admissions committee
OP - original poster/post</p>
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<p>I think so but that’s only from viewing a limited sample. Here are two additional profiles, one from a school in Wisconsin, another a local school (New Canaan). </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.edgewoodhs.org/uploads/media/SchoolProfile09.pdf[/url]”>http://www.edgewoodhs.org/uploads/media/SchoolProfile09.pdf</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://www2.newcanaan.k12.ct.us/education/sctemp/08e79fe386e58dc6e1b02c240bf71d79/1260406969/2009-2010_-NCHS_School_ProfileA__2__-_new_order__.pdf[/url]”>http://www2.newcanaan.k12.ct.us/education/sctemp/08e79fe386e58dc6e1b02c240bf71d79/1260406969/2009-2010_-NCHS_School_ProfileA__2__-_new_order__.pdf</a> </p>
<p>I will give New Canaan credit in that they do indicate the colleges last year’s class entered as well as other colleges kids matriculate to. I know another school that lists ONLY the colleges the prior year’s class matriculated to. Either is fine with me.</p>
<p>cytankee</p>
<p>Are those elite high schools?</p>
<p>^^^^</p>
<p>The word elite has no specific meaning to me - but based on their kid’s scores on ACT/SAT - I would think it would be fair to surmise that they are a long way from a statistical average of all high schools.</p>
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<p>Presumably he meant that irony and hypocrisy are a fine source of amusement.</p>
<p>Well, I suppose the irony/hypocrisy depends on the school’s rationale for not ranking.</p>
<p>I think … when a college admits students from a school that does not rank, the college can put the admits in the “unknown rank” bucket for CDS reporting. So great students who may have been in the 25 or even 50 percentile don’t have to be listed as such. The college is happy they look great in the profiles. The school is happy their students who may be far superior to those from a lesser school can go to finer colleges. That’s how the game is played.</p>
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<p>What rationales do you suppose are free of irony/hypocrisy?</p>
<p>^Well, suppose that a school has two main reasons for not ranking:</p>
<p>1) To remove the pressure of “competition” amongst students
2) To benefit excellent students who would be ranked higher at a different school</p>
<p>Colleges probably only care about 2). However, this situation is “good” for them as well because an excellent “unranked” student outside the top 10% doesn’t hurt their metrics. But they still want SOME indication of how a student stacks up against their peers.</p>
<p>Enter the GPA distribution chart. From the school’s perspective, the chart does not encourage competition like even a decile ranking would because the divisions are absolute, not relative. E.g. In 2008, 8% of the class had a weighted GPA >4.0 (at my school, that’s the top “division” of the chart). In 2009, 13% of the class had a weighted GPA >4.0. Assume no major differences in teachers’ grading policies. Why should it be comparatively “easier” or “harder” to be in the top 10% between 2008 and 2009? Under an absolute standard, students are motivated to work hard–to achieve that high GPA–but not to sabotage other students, because there’s no limit on how many students can be in the top division.</p>
<p>From the college’s perspective, the GPA distribution chart isn’t much worse than decile rankings, because they’ll still know who was in the top X% of the class, and they can see where grades tend to cluster. Plus, they don’t have to report any of this “unofficial” ranking.</p>
<p>–How is this situation ironic or hypocritical? Both school and college have found a way to indicate students’ relative positions in the HS context without encouraging competition between students for a limited number of “top 10%” spots. Even at non-competitive high schools, using GPA distribution would prevent the side effect of a student getting the exact same grades but a lower rank due to the bottom of the class dropping out.</p>
<p>^^^^^</p>
<p>Great and on-the-mark post!</p>
<p>Keilalexandra,
Class rankings and a histogram are not identical, but to my mind close enough to make the differences irrelevant. I am not convinced by your example of '09 and '10 class years as cooperation in action. A distribution that is non-normal can have a number of explanations, but grade inflation would come to my mind first. And for that, ranking is something of an antidote.</p>
<p>An A at Princeton is not the same an an A at Rutgers. Ditto for ranks. There are great schools and there are lesser schools. So the HS ranking metric is meaningless for relative performance or potential to be great.</p>
<p>Sally,
How is rank evaluated in the context of a very small (fifty students) and decently competitive high school?
By decently competitive, I mean 5 national merit scholars, 5 commended, and 4 hispanic with a median score of about 1950 on the SATs. To provide insight, a student who was ranked out of the top 20% has an ED acceptance to columbia this year. I’m ranked ten, and my SAT scores are 2220 with a 33 on the ACT, but I’m wondering what colleges will think.</p>
<p>Eric - I believe there was at least a 2-3% difference in the top “division” of the GPA distribution chart between 2009 and 2010 at my school (class size ~225). Whether my school has grade inflation is irrelevant, because whatever inflation there is should be consistent; there were no policy or teacher changes between the two years.</p>
<p>I maintain my position that decile ranking and grade distribution are significantly different because one is relative, the other absolute–and encouraging students to see themselves relative to their peers will encourage overt competition.</p>
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<p>In boldface are the statements that, if asserted as rationale by a school doing what you describe, are either false, ironic (because the very opposite is true, or the rationale supports an opposite policy) or hypocritical (because the school knowingly acts opposite to the rationale).</p>