<p>My kids' HS currently reports actual unweighted and weighted rank on the transcripts, but the counselling staff is considering a recommendation that they drop the practice of reporting rank altogether or begin reporting only by decile, quintile, or quartile. I have been invited to sit on a relevant committee and have also been asked to provide a summary of the arguments for reporting absolute rank vs. rank by grouping vs. not reporting rank at all.</p>
<p>This is a strong public in a flyover western state which sends a few every year to elite schools. Most kids go to in-state publics.</p>
<p>I’m not a gigantic fan of ranking, but I can’t come up with any solid arguments about how our school handles it. It’s a formula comprised of straight unweighted GPA in all academic classes (50%) + ACT scores (all students are required to take ACT as a component of HS graduation 15%) and a rigor of curriculum factor for particular classes (35%) 4 years of band/choir gain some rigor factor.</p>
<p>Our school no longer reports rank, but does report average SAT’s, percentage of NMS qualified students,percentage of grads attending 4 year colleges, lists of schools that have accepted our students, numbers of AP classes, and such. The GC then writes recs and indicates whether the student has taken the most rigorous schedule possible, etc. Most of the “top” schools have lots of experience with our grads, so this really removes objections to individual candidates solely because they might rank slightly below the top 10% merely because they took courses that interested them, but in which grading was more difficult than other honors courses. At least, they do not have to worry about most of our students crumbling the minute they get less than a very high grade.</p>
<p>Since the school stopped reporting rank, more students seem to have gotten into schools that enroll few students ranked below the top 10%. That is, colleges seem more inclined to take a closer look at transcripts. Sometimes a weighted GPA above a 4.0 can stand in for a designated class rank from another school.</p>
<p>Students who are hurt when they apply to colleges are those that apply to state schools that go strictly by UW GPA, if they have taken honors classes in which only one or two in the class have gotten an A. (This would have nothing to do with whether or not the school ranked, though.) Other state schools go by weighted GPA only. Some parents have noticed that their children with high GPA’s and relatively low SAT and AP scores (high stakes tests in which nervousness can result in lower scores) also seem to be hurt in this process, unable to show that in spite of lower test scores, they were able to hold their own on a day to day basis in a highly competitive high school enviornment.</p>
<p>Rank in local HS is based exclusively on weighted GPA. (We could quibble about the weighting criteria which is +5% for CP, +10 for honors and +15 for AP.) This year DD dropped one slot because a kid took 5 AP classes and did well in them. She only took 4. She’s not upset nor am I. It’s how it should be. Work harder + do better = rank higher.</p>
<p>That said, there’s a total of 1.06 points (on a scale of just over 100) between 1st and 10th so is there really any difference between these kids?</p>
<p>What does it mean, though? A friend of my D’s graduated with highest honors and a 4.0 GPA; she took aa math course that was barely above Algebra as her highest Math class, and took three years of Spanish and the easiest General Science classes. (She is a musician and a fine one at that.) My D took five years of language, lab sciences for 4 years, AP Calculus, and received no honors for a 3.4 GPA. Really, is the child who excels in average courses deserving of a higher ranking?</p>
<p>That’s a big issue, mom4college. Our school doesn’t rank, but you can guess your general decile based on a graph our school sends out to the colleges. </p>
<p>My d, with a 3.9 UW, a 4.1 W and a very rigorous course load, is in the second decile. She’s behind kids who took the less rigorous “college prep” courseload, but scored A+'s in their classes. Additionally, she chose to take Latin, for which there is no Honors or AP in our school, which further lowered her position. </p>
<p>I thank ihs76 for sharing that NACAC info - it made me feel better about the class rank issue.</p>
<p>I’ve long had the opinion that if you rank, you should do so based upon weighted grade points. Not grade point average but grade points.</p>
<p>Our school ranks by weighted GPA - which has a major flaw. Students in our school who are gaming the GPA race take the required courses which don’t have weights associated with them (e.g. PE, Health, Foreign Language) outside the school - either at a local JC or via online courses. Such courses are honored for credit but are not included in the GPA.</p>
<p>They then take as few classes as possible so as to increase the percentage of courses that they are taking which are weighted, increasing their GPA. They avoid activities like band, after school sports, drama which would also lower their GPA.</p>
<p>If, grade points were used, the game would completely change. Students would be rewarded for taking more classes and participating in more “outside normal school hours” activities. An “A” in Track or Marching Band would now be a benefit in the race for rank rather than a detriment. </p>
<p>Ranking by unweighted GPA seems to create a different problem - cited above - where students take the easiest schedule possible to ensure that they end up with a 4.0.</p>
<p>Our h.s. ranks based on a weighted system: standard 4.0, gifted/honors 4.5, AP 5.0. They’ve agreed to weight at the honors level certain classes, such as band, theater, etc. that someone’s done for 3 years, so as not to penalize those students who participate in fine arts, etc. (English classes, do not start weighting as honors til year 3, exception gifted and AP) So this puts the “elective honors” classes in the same scheme. D was valedictorian (4.0 u.w/ and 4.6 w). We did not know this for sure until after her applications were in, as we were only told a percentile until after 7th semester grades when the school announced top 10. Whether or not that info (being able to list valedictorian on her apps) would have been useful, we don’t know. Her first choice school was our state flagship (or, at least one of them, depending on who you ask from our state, LOL), and they didn’t really care, I believe. She had a huge GPA and great ACT’s … that’s all they probably cared about.</p>
<p>zebes</p>
<p>P.S. When there’s no consistancy in the county among high school about how they handle this, it is awkward. My husband coined “stealth valedictorian” with regards to our d at the high school, as they barely acknowledged her. (val doesn’t speak at graduation – not even given the choice not to speak, there’s no plaque or certificate given to her (balloons), and she almost didn’t get to walk in first at graduation). Whereas, other schools in our district are not apologetic about their vals. It’s weird, really … kind of like saying, “well, yes, you are the best quarterback, but … we think we should allow everyone to play the position … don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings; please take a seat on the bench.” That’s the way she felt when everyone would approach her to congratulate her and then find out how very little it mattered at our school. We went to the trophy store (the one our h.s. uses for their sports teams) and had a placque made up for her. They were appalled that the school had done nothing.</p>
<p>My kids’ high school (Catholic) refuses to rank, because it says that its “mid to low” students would be more highly ranked in public schools. The school does identify a Val…and it does identify the top 5 students at graduation…but there has been some controversy with determination.</p>
<p>It can be hard to “rank” students unless they’ve taken identical courses. An A+ in AP Government is much easier to get than an A+ in AP Chemistry…but they’re both awarded 5.0 GPA points (weighted). It is much easier to get an A+ in Choral, then it is to get an A+ in Art, yet they both are given 4.5 GPA points (weighted). Some kids choose to take 4 years of a language, and that is harder than the students who instead take more electives - like “yearbook.”</p>
<p>Zebes, they can never take away the designation your d got whether or not it was celebrated to the extent you all wish. I for one am glad our public school did away with “val/sal” a few years ago when the well known “scholar” did not end up the “val” and everyone was uncomfortable as he retrieved national award after national award and a couple Ivy acceptances which are rare as hen’s teeth in our system. Our public went to a group of senior scholars picked by a formula incorporating a number of factors. It is too difficult with the schools having so many levels of rigor and the fact that band/choir/art kids “give up” class slots and therefore are precluded from some of the rigor classes to fairly designate a #1 student. I can see both sides of the picture. We have senior scholars and the only speakers at graduation are the class president and one senior scholar voted by the other senior scholars. None of which diminishes your D’s success and remember the flagships know the in-state school districts quite well so you are correct that the designation played very little in the grand scheme of things.</p>
<p>You need to consider the ramifications of any recommendations for YOUR school. For a school that sends many students to Ivies then it may make sense not to rank at all. In our state the State schools offer Valedictorian scholarships. As a result our school does not weight grades for Val/Sal decisions (and we end up with about 14 with 4.0 who all tie for Val). Rankings, though, use weighted grades. Interestingly, this past year the school gave out a new award to the top 1% (5 students) and two people were not in the Val set.</p>
<p>Yet another reason class rank is not the only criteria for many things. I am reminded of when they blew it and posted the list of middle school students with a cumulative 4.0 one semester. My son did not have a 4.0, but he also had the toughest courses as well as no study halls, he had more A’s than students with a 4.0…</p>
<p>An ideal world would include a weighting of courses (our district doesn’t), and add up the points accumulated for courses taken. The student with the highest number of points would be top, etc. But as above, some would lose points by taking music instead of yet another AP course. One can also get into how grades are assigned in any course- my son knew more than most but didn’t always do the work- sometimes getting a lower grade. We could go astray and try to determine how much was learned in a course versus knowledge already there at the start. Or expectations based on ability /performance (worked out to ability losses on my HS report cards).</p>
<p>We live in an imperfect world. The best thing to do is to not obsess over the seeming unfairness of how things are done. I know my kid had done more and knew more than the others despite his rank compared to theirs. He will also go farther, hopefully.</p>
<p>In a perfect world, class rank would be determined differently for different students, based on where they were applying to college. So if A, B, and C were applying to Yale, the school would give Yale a ranking system in which they were ranked 1-3, but Brown would get a ranking in which D, E, and F were ranked 1-3, and State U would get a ranking in which other students might outrank some of A-F. The school would have to determine which ranking system would go to which college, and inform the students of that; presumably, it would be based on some determination of weighted student preference and likelihood of admission. GCs would have to be careful to give the right profiles to each college.</p>
<p>And of course there might be a completely different ranking system for internal honors and local press releases.</p>
<p>Also, I suspect there is no value in ranking anyone below the top 10%, so I wouldn’t.</p>
<p>This would clearly provide the greatest good to the greatest number. It would be fun to design the system.</p>
<p>Our district dropped ranking years ago; according to the LA Times, less than half of the California publics still rank.</p>
<p>Ranking just creates gamesmanship: dropping Orchestra/art/theater/fill-in-the-blank bcos it’s unweighted and even an “A” will bring down the weigted gpa.</p>
<p>our local public HA does not rank but does report deciles … I think overall this is a better solution than pure ranking … however it does have flaws. The lack of precision under reports the level of achievement of those in the top 1-5% of a class … thet are reported as being in the top 10% … which understates their achievement. Our school does very well placing kids at top schools … I have no idea if their grading and ranking policies help … or hurt … or are neutral to kids admission outcomes.</p>
<p>Another reason I don’t like the ranking system is that there are often errors.</p>
<p>At DS1’s graduation, the school named the “top five” students…everyone gasped because an obvious child was not named. A week later, the principal sent out a letter naming that child to the top 5 (but he didn’t remove a child - so there were now actually 6 named). </p>
<p>It really was scandalous that the parents all IMMEDIATELY knew there was a mistake, but the school didn’t!!! This is a rather small school, and the principal should KNOW who his top seniors are!!! And, sadly, earlier in the week, when an English teacher heard which students were on the list, she questioned the absence of the one name and the counselor (who created the list) told the English teacher that the list was “correct.” It wasn’t - a grade had been wrongly entered into the computer. The parents of the “left off” student were very angry because they had many family members at the graduation and their child was not publicly honored - as she should have been.</p>
<p>As far as college admission, I realize that with thousands of high schools and so many different grade scales, etc. class rank can be useful as another measure of academic achievement. It needs to be taken in context. It is unfortunate that in some cases (I’m thinking of Texas and the 10% rule here) that class rank is used as an absolute. I also think merit aid should be based on other factors such as strength of schedule, etc.</p>
<p>On the other hand…</p>
<p>School ranks on weighted grades. The GPA’s earned by the top ten are typically so high that they are not possible unless a student takes several AP classes and does well in them.Yes, the GPA’s come down to the 1/100th of a point, but what is the difference between that and the sports (track,swimming) where races are won by 1/100th of a second?</p>