I thought I was doing the right thing by moving 3 years ago to enable my kids to attend a nationally ranked public high school. Now I’m not so sure. My kids, now seniors, have done very well academically. (daughter: 3.88/4, 4.82/5 ACT 32 son 3.6/4, 4.6/5 ACT 33). Yet, that is not enough to put either of them in the top QUARTER of their graduating class of 639 students!! I can’t believe it.
I tell them to aim high and not to worry about rank, that colleges will take into account this is a ridiculously competitive high school but am I giving them false hope here? I see the schools they want to attend and they all boast over 90% of admitted freshmen rank in the top 10% and I can’t help but think I made a terrible mistake. Am I right?
Let’s assume they could have went to a non-competitive high school, graduated with rank #1, GPA 5.0 (because everything was too easy), ACT 27 (because still couldn’t learn enough), and terrible study habit because they never had to work hard.
If this would have enabled them to go to higher ranking colleges, would you have liked it better?
Now your kids have great GPA from a very challenging courses, great ACT score, and more importantly have great work habit that is required to achieve these. They might not be accepted by the schools that boast high ranked admitted, but they are likely to succeed in college and professional career anywhere.
Some parents make the same choice without knowing their children’s capability, or do not provide necessary guidance and emotional support afterward, and their kids suffer great academic and/or emotional difficulties. Then those parents would have made a terrible mistake.
In many places, it is the School Districts themselves that are harming the ranking process or moreover harming the kids themselves with the highest unweighted GPAs by how they choose to weight GPAs for ranking purposes. For example, in our School District in Florida, a straight C student with a 2.0/4.0 unweighted GPA could potentially be ranked #1 and be Valedictorian. It sounds crazy, and it is… but the system nonetheless exists to allow it.
For example, a recent county graduate had a record-setting weighted GPA of 10.02 on a 4.0 scale. This means that the school district allowed more than 6.02 in inflation to the unweighted GPA semester-average. That student did not have a 4.0 unweighted GPA. A 2.0 unweighted GPA student could thus take the very same course load and be able to inflate their weighted GPA to 8.02, possibly becoming Valedictorian. In fact, such a student likely would be Valedictorian at nearly every high school in the School District. That of course should never be possible, but it is possible currently. It would have never been possible before, when a high unweighted GPA was still required for ranking success.
They used to add in the weighting semester by semester and then create an average of all weighted semester GPAs. Now they do not. Now they add it all in at the very end. The emphasis before was on the actual grades received. Weighting was then only meant to differentiate between those with the highest unweighted GPAs.
Apparently to encourage more online schooling, the emphasis is now instead on taking more weighted courses overall. Students can take more weighted courses online and, as long as they get a C, potentially better their ranking. The current weighting method here seems to favor quantity over quality.
The unfortunate result is that class ranking can now be misleading. My D has a 3.98 unweighted GPA with nothing but honors and AP courses, but the system here has allowed 20+ students with lower unweighted GPAs to be ranked better, simply due to attempting more virtual school courses online with weighting.
Every school district seems to have a different methodology, so hopefully our nation’s most elite college takes that into mind, especially when factoring in Rank-In-Class to their admissions decisions…
My DD was ranked in the top 5% of her class with a 3.7 WEUGHTED GPA. Weighted!
Guess what? She got acceoted to the colleges of her choice. The OPs kids will get accepted to colleges as well.
^^ years ago I read a news article of a valedictorian who took 0 course at her high school.
The fact that your kids got great GPA and test scores but were not the top 25% indicates that they might have benefited the most in terms of their personal growth, being right in the sweet Zone of Proximal Development.
In all my kid’s academic course selections, I heavily researched to help her choose courses that she has 90% chance of getting an A when she worked her best, which was usually the case when she was top 25~30% of a class. Because I worry about her development first, and try to work with that for college admissions.
My child went to a rigorous prep school. No weighting, no ranking. But based on the published grade distibution, I doubt he was in the top half. He was accepted at schools that claim 90% of their students were in the top 10 or 20%. The adcoms know these tough schools. I was a mess about this when we were going through it, but it turned out fine. And your kids will be better prepared for college to boot!
Your guidance counselor and if you have it your HS Naviance data should give you a good sense of what schools will make sense for your kids. In general college do take into account the rigor of the HS when looking at applications, at least I have found that to be the case in my kid’s very competitive HS.
How much rank versus GPA matters depends on the college being applied to.
If the OP is in Texas, then it is a rather unfortunate circumstance that Texas public universities use rank as the largest factor in admissions.
@ucbalumnus … Yes, yes it is. Both UT (top 7%) and A&M (top 10%) pit these kids into the rank game from day 1. But the OPs kids have great stats and will likely be fine under holistic review admissions.
(Assuming that the OP is in Texas…)
Having a rank below top 25% would make it very difficult to get into UT Austin through the non-automatic admissions, since only a quarter of the spots are available, all out-of-state applicants are competing for those spots, and rank is still important in that part of the admissions (i.e. non-automatic top 8% rank applicants would have an advantage over top 26% rank applicants).
Of course, if the OP’s kids apply to private or out-of-state schools with much less emphasis on rank, or less selective Texas publics, then they could be fine at those schools.
There should not be wishful thinking that the ranking won’t matter. It will matter a lot at some colleges and the kids could be worse off in admission to those colleges.
But overall, I still believe that op did what was the best based on the outcome. The assumed better education they received would put them advantageous in admission to colleges ranking matters less or considers competitiveness of high schools. At either case, the kids would be better prepared for the college. College GPA matters too.
An advise I once heard: “Don’t worry too much, because any decision you make as parents will leave some permanent damage.”
My daughters’ school doesn’t rank.I think a bunch of privates don’t. There are other ways to determine an applicant’s fit for a given college/university, of course.
Many schools do not rank, but the high school profile says what percent of the class has a gpa of 4.0 and up, what percent have 3.75 - 4.0 for example. So, the AOs are able to figure out which kids are the highest in the class. Do not be fooled by the no ranking game. The most important thing is how you compare to the kids in your school. Get your high school profile & understand it because the AO compare your app to the info in the profile.
I did the same thing with my kids. I feel your pain! If it makes you feel any better, my daughters feel like they’re getting a great education and they feel like they’ll be ready for college. D17 has a 4.3 and is ranked 200 out of 800-it’s nuts. She’s got a 33 act with one sitting, so she’s no dummy.
which is what I keep reminding myself when the class rank number makes me crazy.
To me, the problem is when the ranking is not accurately reflective of the student’s quality academically. My D’s best friend has never had a B - ever. By the end of her junior year, last year, she had also already completed 7 AP courses, with 5s on each. But our school district’s silly weighting method for ranking has her 11th in her class. None of the 10 students ranked higher have a 4.0 unweighted GPA though.
3 years ago, the Salutatorian had a D semester average in one AP class… but he ranked 2nd due to all of the extra weighing added in via extra virtual school classes taken online… where cheating is all too prevalent. In that high school class, my D1 had only one B during her 4 yrs of high school in a single AP course, but she was ranked in the 89th percentile… 56th places behind a kid with a D and C on his permanent record. Sure… if they both applied to the same elite school, the kid ranked 2nd would be found out. But when only one student from a high school applies to a top college, that school may be justified in assuming that those ranked higher scored with better grades.
When the elite colleges expect successful applicants to be ranked in the top 5% or at a minimum the top 10% of their graduating classes, such a requirement assumes that those ranked higher than the applicant performed better academically. In our district, that is likely true less than one-third of the time though. When my D2 was speaking with admissions officials from a few of the elite colleges that had rejected her older sister, the likely reason given was her Rank In Class. 89th percentile did not meet their expectations. They ignored the 3.99 unweighted GPA and put too much emphasis on Rank.
So… if schools insist on Ranking, they should do so accurately. And no student with Cs and Ds should be ranked 1st or 2nd in their high school class due to silly weighting methodologies that favor the quantity of classes attempted over the actual grades earned in those classes…
One thing to remember about the stats colleges put out about how many of freshmen are in top 10%, top 25%. In almost every top LAC, the number of students reporting is way under half, usually a third or less. (You can check it in each college CDS). It is a questionable stat, and losing importance in admissions, as level of interest and sometimes essays are on the rise. Colleges want well-prepared student from great schools, with great profiles.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
The website is called College Confidential for a reason. Don’t try to guess the OP’s HS.