<p>I am writing to ask anyone with experience and knowledge to please give me some information, assistance, advice and support on getting our HS administration to look at and hopefully change the reporting class rank on our students transcripts.</p>
<p>Currently our HS does not weight their courses and they do not intend to change that. It is also not an issue I am requesting for consideration as I know they are very much opposed to it. They do however, report class rank to the colleges which, in my opinion, gives misleading information to the colleges. Currently, all students with all A's are given the class rank of 1. It doesn't matter if those courses were college, AP, Honors, General, or Voc Ed. </p>
<p>Each year we have students who have taken all Honors courses, but got less than 4.0 grades because of one or two B's rank in the high 20's or 30's and may or may not be included in the top 15% of the class of approx. 220 students. This year we had students taking all Honors courses with some B's not get in to our state flagship school while others taking no Honors classes got accepted. When the GC called to inquire how this could happen, she was told by the head of admissions that it was due to class rank. Our salutatorian, with a GPA of 3.982, ACT 33, SAT 2210 was ranked 26th in the class and barely made the top 15%. The local state university did not want to consider her for their top scholarship based on her class rank and low % even though she had the second highest test scores of any applicant this year! </p>
<p>Not sure why, but the principal is resistant to change. Does anyone have advice on how to best to proceed?</p>
<p>I wouldn’t worry about it at all…it’s not worth the trouble. Yes, students who take easier classes may rank higher than students that take harder classes. It’s true in high school and also true in life. Sometimes people that try more challenging things are held to a higher standard than those who choose the easy path.</p>
<p>I can’t tell if you are a student, a teacher, or a parent. But consider these examples:</p>
<p>As a parent, you have the choice whether you put a ton of time into parenting your kids or whether you take the easy route and let them grow up on their own. There’s no extra credit for going the extra mile.</p>
<p>As a teacher, some teachers put huge amounts of time into preparing teaching lessons and some spend very little time into the classroom. Sometimes, the teachers that are considered the best get paid less than those that are lazy and do hardly anything for the classroom.</p>
<p>As a student, whether you choose to do extracurricural activities are not is not figured into class rank. Some students volunteer lots of hours with no additional credit while others don’t volunteer at all.</p>
<p>Life isn’t fair or equitable, and this is one example of that.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This is highly suspect information. I don’t think that colleges can release information about why a particular student was or was not accepted to anyone besides the student. The “rumor” that it was due to class rank may or may not be true. Can you post the name of the state flagship that admits students based solely on class rank?</p>
<p>if you want to change something, organize. Find like minded parents, set up a facebook group, hold a meeting lobby the school board etc. this group achieved change of a policy they thought was unfair - [Debate</a> Over Fairfax’s Grading System](<a href=“http://www.fairgrade.org/]Debate”>http://www.fairgrade.org/)</p>
<p>OTOH, it can take time and may not help your own kid currently in HS. But if you care enough to support change anyway, well than take ACTION. </p>
<p>As for the more imminent problem, consider having your kid apply to private schools, which are usually (AFAICT) less concerned, or at least less rigid, about class rank than some Publics. Note, most colleges do their own weighting as far as GPA’s are concerned.</p>
Your salutatorian was ranked 26th? Were there 25 above her who were ranked #1? And didn’t she share her #2 status with all the other students who got the same number of Bs as she did?</p>
<p>Does the state flagship use the Common Application? If so, then how does your Guidance office answer the question about whether or not the student took the most demanding curriculum? Does that not matter (most demanding curriculum) to your state flagship?</p>
<p>High schools shouldn’t rank. Most colleges don’t.</p>
<p>In fact, Stanford University doesn’t even record GPA on transcripts. They feel that a Stanford degree is a Stanford degree, and that’s that. </p>
<p>While I think the GPA is helpful, the idea of ranking students against each other is not really beneficial to anyone and should be done away with.</p>
<p>I agree that class rankings are a somewhat antiquated system, as we can see in this case they don’t adjust for the existence of Honors or AP classes. </p>
<p>I agree with BrooklynDad, you need to organize a group of other parents who want to change the class ranking system. Also, you’ll need to try and get some hard evidence to back you up. Maybe getting it in writing that class rank was the reason certain kids got rejected and others didn’t? Also, any kind of data you can gather from the parents in the group on their children’s rankings relative to their ranking. You don’t want to appear as just a bunch of sour grapes parents who are mad cause their kids aren’t getting what you think they ought to, you need to look like people fighting a clear inequity that anyone can see and that benefits all students, not just your own. </p>
<p>I understand this dilemma. Our high school also did not weight grades and no weighting was used for class rank. Therefore, often students who took no Honors classes were ranked in the top of the class over the students taking the hardest classes. However, let me say that most colleges, at least private ones, do take note on the GC report that the school’s ranking is UNweighted and understand that and also do examine closely and care about the rigor of one’s chosen coursework. It is unfortunate if a college, like your state public, used class rank in the way that you state, since the rank was unweighted. </p>
<p>What to do? Well, I will share with you what my own D did who also thought such a system was not a good one. Before I explain, let me add that the system of unweighted grades/rank did not affect her personally. She took the most demanding curriculum available and then some and still was valedictorian. However, she noticed for years, that students who took the easy classes were ranked higher than the best students at the high school and sought to change that. Not easy, I will admit. She had nothing to gain personally as she knew if her efforts to change the system even were to happen, that it would not take place until after she graduated but she felt strongly about this issue to effect change for those who came after her. (not to mention that her own rank would not be effected by any change in the system anyway)</p>
<p>My daughter initiated and spearheaded a committee of students on this issue. The committee had only three kids on it in the Student Senate (at the time, my kid wasn’t even elected to the Senate and volunteered to attend the senate meetings anyway and was eventually appointed to it after someone else quit the student senate…but she started this committee herself). While my D spearheaded this committee to develop a policy of weighted grades for ranking, for most of the two years of this initiative, she worked alone on it. She researched grading and ranking systems at schools across the state and in other states. She developed a new policy for her high school, along with a well reasoned rationale statement. She then presented her policy and rationale to the entire faculty (believe me, this took a lot of aggressive pro-active advocacy on her end of it with the principal and other naysayers along the way. This was a two year process (her junior and senior years) and eventually she made her way to doing a public presentation in front of the School Board (and anyone from the public who attended) and I am pleased to say that her policy was eventually adopted by the school and has been in place since my D graduated in 2004. </p>
<p>Even a student can effect change. It was not an easy journey. By the way, her GC and teachers commented on her recs to colleges that she was one of the only students they have seen who created real change in the school (and it wasn’t dependent on her even being elected to student government, a popularity contest at our school). If she can effect change as a kid, perhaps others can be inspired to do so at their schools. That is why I am sharing it here.</p>
<p>We are a small suburban system with only one HS of less than 1K students.</p>
<p>The state flagship does not use the common app. It is TOSU and does not look solely at class rank. The two GC who went to informational meetings in Sept. at OSU were stunned by the Admission’s statement in April that the students in question were not admitted due to their low rank. The GC were led to believe that the level of difficulty of courses would be highly considered.</p>
<p>There were 16 Valedictorians. They had 4.0 GPAs and took the courses required to be V. the other nine had all A’s, but did not take the Honors courses. They use a credit system to somehow figure salutatorian as they only have one. The Salutatorian got a B as a semester grade from the local state university in Calc. Others may have gotten only one B, but it may have been for a full year class at the HS. Some of the others also only got a B in Calc at the state u, but they didn’t take as many courses overall. Hence, each year only one salutatorian.</p>
<p>The full scholarship at the local state u is based on merit alone. It was eventually offered to two the girls- 26th and 27th in their class because one of the members of the selection committee knew them and spoke up on their behalf, otherwise their apps would have been put in the 15% basket.</p>
<p>Let me stress that the concern here is more about money and acceptance than prestige. I called many colleges to inquire about the % of HS still reporting class rank and the consensus is that less than 30-40% of HS still report class rank and it is a downward trend.</p>
<p>In that case, would it be satisfactory if the school eliminated class rank? I think this would be a great step and would be less difficult to convince an administrator than to figure out a complicated alogrithim to balance gpa with classes taken.</p>
<p>wildwood…your points are valid. Actually, in our state, all the vals get a full ride at the state U. My daughter, being val, was offered this (though had no intentions of applying or attending). But at our high school, the val could easily have been someone taking the easiest courses since rank was unweighted at the time. As I said, my D had the hardest curriculum and was the only one with a 4.0, but often someone taking the easiest curriculum can and has been in the top of the class under the system in place at the time. So, conceivably, the val could have been someone with all As in the easiest classes at our HS and been offered the full ride at State U.</p>
<p>By the same token, my D was looking to apply to highly selective colleges, and those colleges care that the student has taken the most demanding curriculum offered at their high school.</p>
<p>Bigtrees, it is not complicated to compute class rank using weighted grades. MANY high schools do that. Now, ours does too but didn’t do so when my kids attended.</p>
<p>Wow, soozievt. Your D did do a lot of work. She also must have thick skin as it isn’t easy to go up against the administration. I met with the principal yesterday and he blasted me up and down. I admit I didn’t see it coming. </p>
<p>My D graduated and will be off to college. I don’t have sour grapes for what happened, though I am guessing some may think I do. I wish that some one who saw this in years past would have spoken up for change. They didn’t, but I feel I have some responsibility to let others know about it and try to get it changed for students to come.</p>
<p>Our special needs kids with modified curriculums receive straight B’s, which means that a kid with all B’s and one C will have kids ranked ahead of him with no hope of attending college. It doesn’t make sense to me. </p>
<p>IMO the school should help its students compete against the rest of the country for placement and money, not hurt them. Right now I am wondering if I am crazy for thinking this.</p>
<p>Bigtrees: eliminating the reporting of class rank is all I have ever asked for. The principal has made it very clear that there is no interest in weighting classes. i don’t have a problem with that if that is how they want it. All I have a problem with is the reporting of class rank if classes are not weighted as it is actually misinformation.</p>
<p>The actual calcualtion of class rank based on an alogrithim is easy.</p>
<p>What is hard is trying to determine how to weight each class and grade. Different schools do it differently across the country, and it can lead to great debate to develop a system that is fair and equitable. Throw in gender and race equality, and throw in learning disabilities with modified curriculums, and it becomes darn near impossible to develop a fair and equitable system.</p>
<p>In other words, it’s the politics is what makes things difficult.</p>