<p>Our district is considering not ranking all of our students. Since we are a Texas public by law the top 10% has to be ranked so it would be students below the top 10% who would not get a rank. I am wondering if those who come from schools that don't rank see this as an advantage or disadvantage and why.</p>
<p>It depends on where a student falls in a rank and the colleges that the particular student likes that will determine whether it is an advantage or disadvantage. I have a son who benefited from non ranking as he had a high gpa at a school with a lot of grade inflation and lots of kids with high gpas. Looked a lot more impressive not to know that half the kids at his school had higher gpas than his. </p>
<p>If you are in the top 1% and your school does not rank, it can be a disadvantage to you especially if a nearby similar school does rank and a student in the top 1% there is applying to the same college you are that seriously use rank. It can really hurt, if your highschool only reports in 10% increments, as things like the academic index can be highly affected by being in the top 1% vs the top 10%.</p>
<p>Most schools that don’t rank give enough info in their school profile, such as grade distribution, for schools to know where everyone ranks.</p>
<p>Our school came up with a good compromise on the ranking issue. They “rank” the top twenty students. After that, everyone is placed in deciles.</p>
<p>Thumper: Why the need to compromise? I’m trying to see what the plusses of not ranking are. I’m not sure I understand it but since many HS’s have gone to this I expect that they saw good reasons for it.</p>
<p>hmom: If most schools provide a profile that provides the information then what is the reason for not ranking?</p>
<p>i was worried that my son’s school does not rank. but it has not hurt him one bit. has received wonderful merit aid offers. his class is only 97 students so ranking could really hurt a student as only 9 students would be in top 10% but a school with 300 students would have 30 kids in top 10% so i would say that size of the class could cause a problem. the school report that explains rigor of classes etc seems to take the place of rankings with any of the colleges he applied to.</p>
<p>I have seen so many incomplete and incorrect school profiles. I always urge parents and kids to check out their school profiles.</p>
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<p>It makes things a bit more fair for students in districts that have selective magnet programs that make up only part of a high school.</p>
<p>Consider school X and school Y.</p>
<p>School X has a graduating class of 400. 100 of them are top students from other neighborhoods who were brought into that school to participate in an elite academic magnet program, and the other 300 live in the neighborhood served by the school.</p>
<p>School Y has a graduating class of 400, all of whom live in the neighborhood served by the school. It has no magnet program. </p>
<p>Now consider a non-magnet student with an unweighted GPA of 3.4 and a weighted GPA of 3.6. Let’s say that his class rank in School Y is 75/400. In School X, because of the presence of the magnet students, all of whom have higher GPAs than he does, his rank would be about 175/400.</p>
<p>The same student, the same level of achievement, but a much different class rank – just because he lives in a different neighborhood. Is this fair?</p>
<p>This is a hypothetical example, using a not-particularly-spectacular student. But it would also apply with better students. My daughter attended a high school that was basically School X – the one with the magnet. Although our district allegedly does not rank, the names of the students in the top 5 percent of the class are announced at the senior awards assembly. In my daughter’s year, every student in the top 5 percent was from the magnet. I felt bad for the top 5 percent of the non-magnet population, who would have been at the top of the class if they had attended a different school.</p>
<p>In schools where the kids are all high achievers such as some select public schools and the highly competitive privates, ranking does not make sense. There may be huge grade clusters. Many of the colleges that have had kids from these schools are aware of this and don’t care about ranking numbers when assessing those kids. However, once numbers are out there, most people can’t help but looking and using them.</p>
<p>(high schooler wandering in here)</p>
<p>Not ranking also makes a lot of sense in pure magnet schools, like the one I attend. Kids in the bottom tenth here would be top decile or two at a normal school.</p>
<p>add to previous also at son’s school some kids enter in 1oth others in 11th grade, its a math/science school so would be like the ones above.</p>
<p>Thank you Marian and cptofthehouse.
Our school isn’t a magnet, and from what I have experience it is definitely more collaborative than competitive even among the very top students. Only a small minority of the kids who go to college don’t go to Texas public colleges. The examples that you sited do make sense, but for an average public school with a class of about 500 students that is already required to rank the top 10% of the class what would be the advantage of not ranking the rest of the class?</p>
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<p>To prevent overt competition and complaining parents.</p>
<p>My DD falls in the catagory Cptofthehouse talks about. She goes to a large HS with around 650 kids in her class. They stopped ranking 3 years ago to avoid complaining parents 
At that time, my DD was given an award for top 1%. Since the new policy was implemented DD is listed as “top 10%”. When she started looking at colleges, I asked GC how they would handle a top student like my DD since like CPT mentioned, I believe there is a big difference between being student #2 and student #65. The GC said the recommendation letters will often allude to the high rank of the student. The registrar did print out her ranking (they actually still do rank but they dont make it public) to see if she was actually number 1 or 2 so she could go for any Val/Sal scholarships which the school wants her to get eventhough they dont have a Val or Sal to avoid competition! At the start of the year she was listed as number 2. Not sure how they would document this to colleges. People on CC say it doesnt matter, and I am hoping they are right!</p>
<p>Spring…your daughter’s situation is exactly WHY our school ranks the top 20 students only…and puts the rest in deciles. For those few students at the top, this “might” be important (note…MIGHT). It also kept the complaining parents of those top few students from COMPLAINING.</p>
<p>With the Academic Index–not having a rank but rather a decile hurts the calculation, right?
So the cal takes the mid point of the decile …which is a big difference.</p>
<p>The schools our 2 younger kids attend(ed) does not rank. For one, it’s a small graduating class (130 tops) and two, the idea is that it encourages adcoms to actually look at the rigor of courses taken. Our older attended a huge public, who did rank but did not weight. How disappointing to be in the bottom half of the class with a slightly above B average. Worse was that she took classes that less than 25% of the kids took. This system actually encourages kids to not take as rigorous a course as they might based on GPA and class rank alone. </p>
<p>As for school profiles. Our profile will list the percentage of kids taking AP’s and CIS courses and the percentages of success. It also says that all juniors take AP English Lit and that 100% had 3’s or better. It also gives the averages (over 5 years) of SAT and ACT, Merit finalists, etc. I just looked over it again and I don’t think you can be accurate in getting the rankings from it, but you could tell what classes are being taken with the most rigor. STILL… this forces an adcom to really look at the transcript, which I thought was more of the point in not ranking kids.</p>
<p>Our school (small, private) doesn’t rank but does provide GPA by quintile on the school report. </p>
<p>I think the reason they don’t rank is more than just preventing competition and complaining parents. Ranking creates differences that don’t really exist. In our school, nos 2-10 are just as accomplished and smart and likely to succeed as #1.</p>
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<p>Agreed, but I worry about whether the colleges will know who the tippy-top kids are with no ranking. S’s school has just changed from ranking to only reporting deciles. There are 600 plus kids in his class, and S has gone from being one of the top 10 students in his class to being among the top 60. </p>
<p>However, I do hope removing the ranking stops some of the gamesmanship that goes on at our school to avoid taking required but unweighted classes.</p>
<p>My D’s school only ranks #1 and #2. The rest get top 10%, etc. My D was #3 by a hair in a class of 323, so the adcoms only knew she was anywhere from # 3 in her class to # 32. I think this hurt her.</p>