<p>siserune,</p>
<p>Ultimately, it’s all a ‘paper chase’, so if you want to dwell on hypocrisy and irony the whole system is loaded with it - this being merely a twig in the forest. That said, if you believe that having little Johnny battling little Susie for who is going to be 6th in the class versus 7th is a good thing and a positive goal - you’re welcome to your opinion.</p>
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<p>Has anyone in fact posted the “belief” or “opinion” you are now attacking?</p>
<p>For my part, what I posted above were answers to some of Keilexandra’s questions, and a correction of a rather long string of incorrect statements. The correction was apparently necessary, since at least one poster hailed that collection of mistakes as being “great and on the mark”.</p>
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<p>First, let’s cut the nonsense. Drop the passive-aggressive “one poster” nonsense when you know that it was me that posted it. Let’s lose the smarmy responses and act like adults. Clear? </p>
<p>Secondly, Keilexandra has, in my view, expressed his or her opinion quite clearly. You either rank or you don’t rank. Obviously, Keilexandra and I believe that the advantages to not ranking far outweigh any disadvantages for competitive high schools. In my view, so much so that it’s a ‘no-brainer’ for very competitive high schools. If you disagree, that brings us back to Johnny battling little Susie and kids at competitive high schools being at a very real disadvantage when compared to programs that aren’t in their league. Now, if you want to bring forth YOUR discussion points as to why competitive high schools should rank - that would be great - but right now it appears you’ve got a Peggy Lee “Is That All There Is” song going on.</p>
<p>siserune, we have disagreed in the past but I respectfully ask that you explain the boldfacing in your previous post. I’ve just reread it and honestly don’t see what is false/ironic/hypocritical. Do you dispute that absolute measures of excellence do not encourage competition, whereas relative measures of excellence do?</p>
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<p>Among other things, I dispute the statements that GPA-based strata are “absolute” and “not a ranking”.</p>
<p>Ranking alone is a relative measure, that is true. Grading alone is (sort of, but close enough for this part of the conversation) an “absolute” measure, also true. However, a conversion chart between grade strata and rank strata eliminates that distinction. Such a chart is the essence of the system you described.</p>
<p>What you call “not ranking” is a ranking (the relative, competition-inducing kind) together with some additional information. The extra information does not and cannot turn the ranking into a not-ranking.</p>
<p>Thanks for the explanation. Could you further elaborate on how creating a “conversion chart” leads to a de facto “relative, competition-inducing [ranking]”? How is the relative/absolute strata distinction eliminated?</p>
<p>From personal experience, the system has worked ideally in my high school. Rank (released only if scholarships or schools call specifically to ask for it) is actually not based on GPA, but on “how high your A is” by quarter; we’re all deadly curious about who’s val, etc., because no one knows–but no one is trying to beat out a person or people in rank, partially because a given person might know the ranks of 3 close friends, at most (and many people don’t bother to ask Guidance about their own rank, which also inhibits the gossip). I’ll go dig out the 2008/2009 school profiles to check, if I can find them, but I believe there was a 4-6% difference in the top GPA stratum. Teachers don’t suddenly decide to grade everyone harder because the class as a whole is smarter. Thus, this year more people have a 4.0+ GPA and more people qualify for the “top” rank.</p>
<p>Grading itself is variable, depending on teacher, but as you say, it’s “close enough” for this discussion.</p>
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<p>By providing rank information, not otherwise available, through the GPA vs rank (stratum to stratum) conversion table. The strata are effectively an award of Gold Medal, Silver, Bronze etc, to each student, with the value of the medals derived entirely from the disclosure of how many (or which percentiles) received each award. </p>
<p>Thus, in publishing the GPA table, the school has created a zero-sum ranking tournament for a positional currency, and to the extent that this currency has value, an incentive to compete for it. A student who ordinarily would have been fine with a 3.75 GPA might fight to surpass 3.8 if that is the cutoff for the Gold, or decline to help others who are potentially of the same or higher rank group.</p>
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<p>What you called a “GPA distribution chart” is nothing but a conversion table between absolute (GPA) and relative (rank/percentile) strata. As such it renders either measure equivalent to the other.</p>
<p>Your absolute/relative discussion was about a different question: how are the strata to be chosen, given that a stratified ranking system is to exist. There are different design decisions that can be made, with differing competitive implications, but no such system can qualify as “absolute” or “not a ranking”.</p>
<p>I also sincerely wonder how ad coms keep all the highschools sep. For example we are in an avg hs in ohio. Only 50% take the sat and avg is only 1090 (M/V) He was well above this. Our school does not even report sat2 nor does guidance suggest taking them. AP classes are a joke with only 45% of students getting a 3+ so many students do not take them because we are on a block schedule and many AP classes require 2 blocks out of the 8 for a year! </p>
<p>So I am just not sure how this is compared to some other schools I see on CC where students take 5-10 AP classes 3-4 SAT2’s. My son has taken all honors classes for core curriculum only 1 ap, will graduate with an honors diploma, yet does not seem to stand out among some of the other candidates. Many kids go to colleges but mostly local schools (OU, Cincinnati, OSU, and Bowling Green)</p>
<p>How do they compare someone trying to break away from that but did not have the opportunities.</p>
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Setting aside the notion that this table isn’t published in the same way as rank (e.g. you don’t find out until senior year when the school profile is compiled AND you ask to see it)–why would a student shooting for “Gold” (i.e. to increase his own GPA) decline to help others of the same or higher rank group? Do sensible people really believe there’s a difference between a group being composed of 19% or 20% of the class? I agree that a motivated student might ask for his own “ranking” and then strive to improve it–but it’s not a competitive improvement because he has no incentive to “hurt” others in the same situation.</p>
<p>I have a question. (As do we all it seems). I go to a high school that is quite unique. We are a two year residency program in Texas. We live in a dorm on the University of North Texas - we eat, sleep, and take classes here. In other words, we take classes that otherwise normal college students are taking as well. I even have quite a few college sophomores taking a class that I am currently in. However all of us in this program are still high school students. In essence, our diploma is composed completely of all college classes - there is no AP, there is no honors, because we only take University courses - and nothing else. If we applied to a school in Texas, say the University of Texas at Austin, we would transfer in as a junior in college. Furthermore, since we are composed of around 200 individuals from the state of Texas and our class has a median SAT that is abnormally high, obviously the program does not rank. We are well known and well established (since 1987). </p>
<p>Since our courses are from the college itself, the college decides our GPA’s, and thus we are not weighted at all. We are graded on a standard GPA scale that most colleges use. Does this put us at a disadvantage? Every single student applies to college, and we have many kids get into plenty of good schools, but I’m still curious where we stand since we don’t take APs, or Honors, or any of those. How would a college judge my GPA, since it’s completely unweighted and had no grade inflation at all?</p>
<p>Several threads by this OP expert…have little expert advice/info</p>
<p>what gives?</p>