<p>News</a> & Observer article</p>
<p>"More than 300 students have signed petitions in the past week calling on Enloe to stop calculating class rank..."</p>
<p>Complicating factor: "Under North Carolina law, public schools must put class rankings on student transcripts."</p>
<p>It's a fairly thorough article that reviews some of the advantages and drawbacks of ranking high school students.</p>
<p>Hey, I have friends in the IB program at Enloe! I've heard it's really competitive, so I'm not surprised they want to drop ranking. </p>
<p>Most of the students end up at UNC Chapel Hill, which knows how competitive the school is, so I'm not sure exactly how big a problem it is, though.</p>
<p>And I thought my high school was competitive..... I have a 4.36 weighted GPA and I rank #34 of 254. My school district caps off weighted GPA's at 4.69 so those crazy people don't go all the way into the 5.0's or higher.</p>
<p>As far as publics go, regular schools should be ranked and magnets shouldn't. It's not that hard to figure out</p>
<p>Perhaps I'm not one to talk, as my senior class is too small to consider ranking, (30 students), but the only time we use ranking is to determine valedictorian and salutorian. We give weighted GPA to IB courses (we do not have Honors as American high schools have. IB is our Honors course), but other than that, the use of ranking is basically useless.</p>
<p>I heard that UT system automatically guarantees top 10% student (is it public Texan high schools, private ones or a sort of "membership high school" thing) spots at their universities. In my mind, this is a positive-ish effect of having ranking. To "reward" the students' hard work, the universities give something back. I do wonder though, how the GPA works in the high schools and whether regular, honors, AP/IB courses are given different weights and if such a debate about GPA's have been sparked there.</p>
<p>Am I coherent?</p>
<p>IzzyJ, since I live in Texas, I can explain a little. All the public schools in Texas accept all students from the top 10%. At a school like UT-Austin, they cannot be guaranteed to be admitted to the major of their choice (Business and Engineering are much more competitive), but are guaranteed into the College of Liberal Arts. I think most Texas high schools do weight GPAs, well, at least mine does. </p>
<p>For very small, very competitive schools, ranking hurts more than it helps. At my large, not very competitive school, it helps.</p>
<p>Thanks, raindrop! That cleared some of it up for me. I wonder if my own country has such a system...</p>
<p>Hey. I live at the school of Science and Math. Lot of students here are from Enloe. We don't have ranking here, and I think it helps. When I'm bogged down with a lot of homework, tests, and quizzes, the last thing I want to do is compete w/ friends, rather than work with them.</p>
<p>My high school (NJ/Public) did away with ranking because it just became too competitive
I was 100th in the class and I had a 3.9GPA</p>
<p>Say if everyone who is protesting against the ranks suddenly got into the top 5%, would they still be trying to bury ranks? I don't think so.</p>
<p>I think high schools shouldn't rank because it really doesn't show a student's hard work. IB students have more weighted classes in their schedule at my school, and therefore our validictorian is always an IB student. Also, they are exempt from taking PE, health, and other regular courses that are required by the state. So no matter how many AP and honors classes you take, you're still ranked lower.</p>
<p>You're right, IB students do get into higher classes, but when IA's, EE's and exams come around, you'll be happy that you aren't an IB student. It's not easy being IB so don't think that IB students have it easy.</p>
<p>At the other end of the spectrum, class ranking isn't really all that indicative at relatively non-competitive high schools, either.</p>
<p>The val and sal of my grade have just started to take AP classes. The APs I'm taking this year are my third and fourth. My school only weights for class rank; GPA is not weighted. This favors them and hurts me.</p>
<p>I go to a really competitve IB school in Washington, and I think class ranking is a good and bad thing. Good aspects: It rewards students for their hard work. Bad aspect: I'm am almost full IB (not taking TOK or foreign language). The reason I'm not full is because I wanted to continue to take music classes and extra IB/AP Science and Math classes (my two areas of strong interests). As a result my class rank went from 1/~400-450 to 10/~400-450. I'm not complaining about my class rank. It is still very good and I made the choice not to go full and to take my passions. However, I do think there is some inequitability in the system. </p>
<p>I would not propose getting rid of class ranking. I think it is a good incentive! At IB schools, I would examine and potentially revise how challenge points are awarded!</p>
<p>My school (public, PA) abolished class rank for my graduating class -- we don't have a valedictorian at all. It's actually had a lot of positive side effects: kids now are taking classes that they want to take, such as arts classes, and not just APs. My senior elective, actually, is not even honors (even though it's as challenging as many APs) and even though it's the class I'm learning the most in, I wouldn't be taking it if we still had class rank, since even an A would bring me down. Abolishing class rank allows people to take classes for reasons other than a number.</p>
<p>my school only uses rank to find the top ten students (out of like 300-350)</p>
<p>I go to a magnet school and am thankful that we have a strict policy of no ranking. We only have 75 kids in our graduating class so you know how the percentiles would work out (especially since the top part of the class is quite competitive).</p>
<p>Yeah, my school should do away with ranking. But it's too late for us seniors. Similar situation tkb6. The other day, I heard a junior talking about what classes he'd take next year... "I have to take at least 2 more APs and get an 85 to even out my rank..." An abuse and waste of the AP system if that's why he's doing it.</p>
<p>lol...........thats so funny gold. we get so many unqualified students in AP.</p>
<p>yaaa i posted sumthing a week or 2 ago about how i despise class ranking and how it hurts people in competitive schools.</p>
<p>Everyone got on my case because "other people deserve a chance"</p>