<p>I already did mention the planning aspect, SS (for the parent). My post about that is on the earlier page.:)</p>
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<blockquote> <p>generally this all-girl Catholic has policies in place that enhance a girl's profile, rather than harm it<<</p> </blockquote>
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<p>And this is the important point and what schools should be doing--helping, not harming, their students as they move onto the next step. </p>
<p>But the kids most hurt by deciles are the top kids--the quality of work put out by the #1 kid at our local high school is much better than the kid who is #75, but both would be considered in the top decile.</p>
<p>Ellen..I think that that is exactly why the school doesn't release rank...so that the tippy top kids don't jump out of a window or something. There is a layer of very high achieving kids at the top percentiles at the hs here. I just don't know how deep a layer it is, which impacts my D very much. If the NJ state schools weren't so inflexible about merit aid, this wouldn't be an issue. But they are, and all of the state merit awards that I have seen are based upon SAT scores and being in the "top 20%" or "top 15%". Since I dont' know where she sits in this rank, I dont' know if she merits any money. That's hard because we won't get a cent from FAFSA. We are not poor, but we are certainly not rich. $20K a year is a lot of money to come up with for 4 years in a row, especially when adding an additional $10K for 2 more years of nursing school tuition. It would be lovely to be able to know whether my D will be eligible for anything or not. Knowing that she would be eligible for $2000 or $3000 would be wonderful. It just seems unnecessary that the high school is being so secretive with parents when they will blithely give this info over to schools that ask.</p>
<p>tanya, i.m.o. most merit aid is few & far between, with most cases consisting of rigid, numbers-driven requirements. (i.e., hardly just NJ) It's one of my pet peeves about merit aid: that it's too often limited to quantitative assessment of accomplishment, & further, restricted to GPA, rank, scores. I think it's fine that there's a category for that, but not fine that the same person accepted to HYP for stunning qualitative achievement in many areas is sometimes NOT qualified for merit aid at a public or private. And I share your exasperation regarding the planning. It is similarly an issue for us, and for thousands of families.</p>
<p>To clarify a term - if your high school will give out a decile, THAT IS A RANK. It is not precise, but frankly most colleges are happy with deciles. It shows approximately where your child fits in comparison with his peers. A DECILE IS A RANK.</p>
<p>That said, your high school's policy of refusing to reveal rank to you for planning purposes is absurd! If they are willing to send a decile to the college they should be willing to give it to you. By law they have to let you see your child's records, I cannot fathom how they can give your child a numerical rating and not reveal it to you. I can see keeping recommendations private, because they are someone's opinion and is that person going to be truthful if they know the object of the recommendation will read it? But a class rank is an objective fact. </p>
<p>If I were you and I had any attorney friends, I'd ask about the legality of the school witholding that info.</p>
<p>If they don't ever calculate rank, that's fine. But if they rank (by decile, quartile or whatever) and reveal it to a college, I can't see how they can conceal that info from a student.</p>
<p>I basically agree with Lafalum (although not so much about rank, because when one gets to upper level admissions, and to specific scholarships which can be quite few, there is a difference between top decile and top 5% or higher). But with regard to the disclosure aspect, yes. If high schools (mistakenly, I believe) are of the opinion that publicly disclosed ranks will encourage cutthroat competition, then administration can require secrecy on the part of families (until graduation), which if broken can cancel the enrollment contract.</p>
<p>Yes, a decile is a rank. They don't ordinarily send them to colleges, but will for scholarship purposes (our issue) and for places like the US Military Academies. If they can have it, why can't I? We moved 6 years ago to be in this district because the schools are better. The problem is that a kid who would be top 5% in a middling school can't crack the top 20% here. I'm afraid that's what's happened to my D, but I can't know til they let the info out. AAAA!! She got a better education at this school than she would have at her previous one, so I can just think of the lost scholarship money as hs tuition, I guess! Thanks, everyone, for replying to this thread. I'm happy to know that most of you agree that this is ludicrous.</p>
<p>Our hs is extremely competitive and there are many very talented kids, and yet the school administration insists on limiting the first decile to only the top 10% of the class!!<br>
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:D</p>
<p>Don't the guidance counselors have to provide a school profile which essentially plots out the deciles? And can't you more or less infer a more precise (but still approximate) class rank if you have that and a GPA?</p>
<p>Will the school give you its profile?</p>
<p>LOL---Gotcha, NJres! Good one. My point is that someone in the harder schools in the top 25% would be equivalent to someone in another school in the top 5%. It would be good if the state schools would take that into account, but they dont.
JHS: I called earlier to ask about this, but have not gotten a a call back. (nor do I expect one--they very commonly don't return calls)</p>
<p>I had the same thought as Marian - get the profile the school appends to transcripts. I've skimmed, but not read, every post here and don't see the follow-up to her suggestion.</p>
<p>Does the school not do a profile?!? It would be for a previous year, I guess, if you see it; but it should give you the general lay of the land.</p>
<p>Does the school publish an honor roll? Lots of schools have an "all A" and "As and Bs" honor roll. It's best if they do a final one, but most schools don't. Still, it generally seems that kids who have all As in 4th quarter will have all As or very close for the year. Anyway, find one of these lists. If there's (for example) ten kids in the grade with all As that your daughter can verify take AP classes, and she is not also on this list, then by numbers you can probably roughly figure she is not in the top % ranking. If she is on either list, look at the numbers. Cross off the kids she knows don't take AP classes (could be a few but generally IME most on these lists do). This is if AP classes are weighted in the GPA, if not then AP/not AP does not matter at all. Anyway see how many kids there are and you can probably figure she falls in there for THIS year. </p>
<p>Of course many can be later bloomers so you'd need lists from all four years really to get a better approximation based on final GPAs. And weighting can be tough, but this shows the top achievers and at my school at least it would probably give a 25% indication...they'll tell us our decile anyway though. </p>
<p>I'm not suggesting you get too obsessive, since this method seems a little stalkerish, but if push comes to shove and they won't tell you and you want any rough approximation, figuring out what percentage of the class has kids on the top honor roll will give you a basic idea.</p>
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The school will provide the colleges with my D's decile or quartile toward the purposes of scholarship assignment and service academy admissions, but will not provide parents with the same info for planning purposes.
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<p>If her school is state-funded, it may be illegal to generate individual data about a student and not disclose it to the parent. FOIA and the Buckley Amendment come to mind. There are lawyers reading CC who would know more precisely.</p>
<p>Tanyanubin:</p>
<p>Our High School and its sister HS does not rank and refuses to give any rank. The Profile that is sent to all colleges state this clearly The policy precludes the reporting of rank-in-class.</p>
<p>I have found that schools considering scholarships (merit) will use the GPA and the SAT/ACT scores andgo from there.</p>
<p>Frankly, not ranking (at least for our schools) is a blessing as we have some very motivated students and the 4.0 UW and 4.++++ Weighted grades are many. Ergo, many otherwise excellent students are not in the top 10% or even the top 20%, yet has excellent GPA's of 3.8 and 3.9.</p>
<p>It is also quite reasonable to suspect that the GC does not know the rankings in any exact or even approximate %.</p>
<p>Rutgers and C of NJ and all of the colleges in NJ know the schools that do not rank, know the reputation of those schools and can easily come up with their own profile. In the last 3 years over 800 applications to Rutgers (NB) and almost 500 for C of NJ have been sent from our two high schools. Rutgers and C of NJ have their own history and profile of the students from our school and I am willing to bet your child's school as well.</p>
<p>Relax and submit what is available. In this case it migh be best not to beat the system! What if you find that the ranking is 31%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!</p>
<p>LOL! Yup, that's what I'm thinking!</p>
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What if you find that the ranking is 31%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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<p>Then the OP and the OP's kid would know that it is a waste of time to submit applications for scholarships/programs that require a rank in the top 30% and would spend that time doing other things. I thought that was the whole point here. The OP doesn't want to have to waste effort on applications for things for which the student is already academically ineligible but doesn't know it.</p>
<p>In NJ, in the non-ranking publics, you generally know who the top ten students are, but, beyond that, nada. The only indication you might have that your child is near the top is great grades in honors/AP courses, and induction in the National Honor Society.</p>
<p>My complaint about percentiles (usually top 10%) used to give merit scholarships is that the formula never takes into account the size of a school. A small private or magnet school might have 100 seniors -- therefore with only 10 qualifying for the top 10% -- while a graduating class of 1000 will have a 100 potentially eligible students.</p>
<p>^^^.... or worse, if the size of the class is even smaller (57), and with 15-20 superb students on a similar plane, that hundredth of a decimal point will do you in -- placing you only at "top 30% or so" with a 3.88 unweighted.</p>
<p>Also if the school publishes one of those lists of where seniors go...our shows just the GPA. It's supposedly so people can see where they have a chance or whatever. If they have one of these lists, you may be able to assume that this years class will follow similar patterns and you may be able to see what the spread of GPAs were last year (or for this year's senior class since I guess your daughter is a junior). But that's not the best indication, just another rough one of how things generally might go at the school.</p>
<p>OR the school where there's grade deflation on top of that -- and certain teachers (unknown to the colleges) who never give out anything higher than an A-, with most students earning Bs. The GPA, then, of an individual students seems average when really the level of work and achievement is much higher.</p>
<p>But such is college admissions . . .</p>