<p>I am sure all of you have looked at the CA teacher evaluations and saw the ticking section of the evaluation.</p>
<p>There is a column that lists: "Top 1% of my career", "Top 10%", etc etc...</p>
<p>I was just wondering, how often are the "Top 1%" boxes ticked? I mean, to think about it numerically, it is very very rare, but teachers might ticket it for a 'good measure' for the student.</p>
<p>So I guess my question is, is it impressive if the teacher ticks "Top 1%" or is does it act as a mere reaffirmation that the student is doing good work in class?</p>
<p>haha I think we all want to know. My opinion is that it does is given some weight, but not much at all. I don’t think they’d think you amazing if you were ticked as “Top 1%” compared to someone ticked as “Top 10%” because it is all really objective and teachers interpret it differently. One teacher may view “leadership” as someone with 4 officer posiitons and say “Top 1%” and another teacher may measure this according to level of involvement rather than position and say “Top 10%”. I think it is the letter in itself that matters more, and the ticking box is more of a range (above average or below average). At least I hope so.</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone “knows” this. Personally I don’t think it means much at all because its so subjective. As long as you’re in the top it doesn’t matter. Also I’d assume since we pick teachers that like us, they won’t give us bad marks anyway so I’d think almost everyone would have pretty high marks even if its not extremely accurate. The only thing that might barely raise the validity of it is if you waive your right to see it because then at least the teacher can be a bit more truthful since they won’t be afraid to offend you. Even then though I’d imagine almost all will be in the higher range since the teacher will most likely want to help you not stop you from getting into college, so I really don’t think it matters at all, but again we’re not adcoms so we can’t really know and I’m sure different ones feel differently about them also.</p>
<p>I doubt they have a ton of value. You can’t compare applicants based on them, because they’re asking different teachers for the evaluations. One teacher’s Top 5% might be another teacher’s Top 10%. I think basically the only purpose they serve is to see if there is one or more catagories where a student is dreadfully lacking. It’s probably the lowest percentages that can cause some problem for an applicant. But who knows. I find them ridiculous. Many means of assessment are in some way subjective, but that one tries to pretend to be quantitative or scientific or something… it’s stupid.</p>
<p>I used to have to write letters of rec and I never filled it out. I just added a note that the applicant’s attributes would be better and more fully addressed in the body of the letter.</p>
<p>It really depends on interpretation. For some things I am probably not top 1% of students that my teacher has encountered, but Id consider myself top 1% of high school seniors in the country</p>