<p>In every school, there is some sort of top honor for doing well in high school; for some, it might be the top 25 students, for others the top 10%, but because my school is so tiny, anyone who graduates in the top ten of the class is a hot commodity.</p>
<p>And in most schools, I have noticed, there is a weighted grading system to ensure that the students who have worked the hardest can receive what they have earned, so that it's harder for kids who have taken no honors and four classes a day to graduate in the top percentage for doing absolutely nothing. In my school, this is not the case.</p>
<p>The rankings are not officially released until the end of the second quarter, which is at the end of January, but all of us honors super-nerds have been going to guidance since mid-September so that we can determine where we lie and where we need to improve to get higher (as well as for bragging rights). Usually, the rankings are fairly accurate. This year, they're pretty skewered: so far, the two biggest cheaters are ranked 10 and 3, respectively, and from what we have determined by her GPA, one of my closest friends is ranked 9. This is awesome for her...but she has never taken an honors class in her life and has usually had at least two study halls per school day.</p>
<p>To me, this doesn't seem fair, but there isn't much that we can do to contest rankings...and she is one of my friends, and I am very happy that she is doing so well and thus probably would not argue against it anyway. Has something like this ever happened in your school? How is your class turning out so far?</p>
<p>If you want to know, I am also bitter because I turned out to be ranked 57, but that is because I was a twit in ninth grade for various home reasons and due to the fact that my tiny class is hypercompetitive; over a quarter of us have averages over 90%.</p>
<p>^ Amen to that…same problem with people trying to screw around the Unweighted Ranking system in my school. People drop AP Classes after getting a B+ for the first quarter in them, because 25% of the class has a 90< GPA, but only 3% of the class takes AP classes. The rest take either all honors (joke-honors courses) or easy courses. Lame.</p>
<p>My school calculates using weighted GPAs, and therefore its ridiculously competitive. to be top top 10 students at the end of junior year, you would have needed to get straight As in 11 APs, 9 honors classes, or something around that.</p>
<p>NY_Democrat - That’s exactly what happens in my school. Out of 179, 30 or so take honors courses – which is better than yours, but still not good considering that 50+ have 90 or higher.</p>
<p>Icooufoo69 - I sort of wish my school were more like that. It might be competitive, but it’s more fair, and the people who deserve to be on top will turn out that way.</p>
<p>i think the top 10-15 kids all pretty much have 4.0s UW, the only variations are in the number of AP/GTs they took. for example, a 4.0 band kid would be a couple spots below another 4.0 kid because he took band as an elective, wheres the other kid would have taken Stats AP or something.</p>
<p>We have 13 4.0s, so our school releases both unweighted and weighted ranks. I don’t think that our weighting system is very fair, though. Classes like Band and Latin 1-4(!) aren’t weighted, whereas classes like Art II GT are. </p>
<p>I’ve benefited from the unfairness of the system: I’m not in Band or Latin, I took Art II GT (after having been told it was UNweighted, for the record; I just found out last week that it is), etc. I am ranked #2 (.02 GPA points behind #1!) as a result of having taken classes that I enjoy, which is great and all, but I have friends who have also taken classes that they enjoy (including Band and Latin) and deserve to be ranked higher. IMO, only core classes and APs should be weighted. That would still allow for people to stock up on APs just for the sake of rankings, though, and classes like Latin and Band would still drag people down. Hmm. I don’t really know what I’d consider fair…</p>
<p>There is no fair way to rank everyone, because one system can’t adapt to the diversity of high school educations. There are way too many variables for one set procedure to be effective.</p>
<p>im so glad for weighted rankings. our school releases top 5%
i have a 3.7 UW with more than 20 kids getting easy 4.0s but my unweighted is WAYYYY higher than theirs. Sweet justice</p>
<p>Amciw: You know, that is an excellent point. Perhaps I should amend this; not “entirely fair,” but at least the kids who worked harder than the ones who took electives practically their whole way through high school should have more of an advantage, I suppose.</p>
<p>To everyone who has mentioned it: I have never really understood the 4.0< scale. I mean, it makes sense, but how does it work exactly?</p>