<p><em>I am currently investigating the pros and cons of eliminating class rank for a high school newspaper article and would love to hear some opinions from the CC community. :) *</em></p>
<p>So, I'll start us off...a few school districts in my area have complained that ranking students more often than not puts lower-ranked students at a disadvantage. They argue that a student with a 3.7 GPA ranked in the top 25 percent in his class looks worse to an admissions counselor than a student with a 3.7 GPA ranked in the top 10 percent at another school. </p>
<p>However, this view ignores the fact that colleges take into account many other factors when using class rank in the admissions process. It's almost as if some high schools do not trust colleges to make educated decisions...</p>
<p>So here's my question: Should school districts trust colleges to fairly consider students' class rank in the context of a school's course offerings, national ranking, and grading systems? Or, are schools justified in not ranking students at all and thus FORCING colleges to look at the whole student and recreate an applicant's rank from broad data?</p>
<p>Ranks are too subjective. At my school I would probably be ranked around 6 out of 50 which is outside the top 10%. However, I go to a competitive private so if I were at the local public, I would most certainly have a higher GPA and be well within the top 10%.</p>
One of the jobs of AdComs IS to “to fairly consider students’ class rank in the context of a school’s course offerings, national ranking, and grading systems?”.</p>
<p>Even if class rank were to be eliminated, colleges could get a good idea of where a certain student stands in relation to his/her peers through things like the secondary school report, and GPA distributions of the class. Though class rank has some major flaws, it’s still one of the best ways to gauge a student’s performance relative to his/her peers.</p>
<p>I like class rank. I go to a large public with hyperinflated GPAs. Having over a 3.5 means NOTHING, but being in the top 5% of your class does…
It pushes people to work alot harder and also tells you exactly where you stand.</p>
At one point last year I had an unweighted GPA of 3.67, yet my class rank was 7/453 because my school adds a lot of weight to AP and honors courses.</p>
<p>Unfortunately there appear to be too many complications that schools introduce in determining GPA, weighing and ranking. For most part “AP” courses signify rigor. It’s almost never the case that with the exception of AP Calculus and Level IV/V or higher of a language course that the student actually skips (or would want to skip) the class at a selective college. The difference between a college course in Chemistry or Biology or Physics and the high school AP equivalent course is huge.</p>
<p>Best, for the top students (for whom this question of GPA and ranking is really about) that a high-standard of coursework is expected of everyone. In selective academic private high schools that’s a common approach – rigorous program, no weighing, and no ranking. Selective colleges don’t have an issue with that. They compare students from such schools – past and present among themselves, and they review the actual program.</p>
<p>With ranking, after all, how do you compare a B+ in French Literature to an A- in music theory? There’s enough competition among top students. Reading the CC forum I often see posts about should I take a course/or not because it would affect my GPA. I doubt that selective colleges appreciate this kind of concern.</p>
<p>My high school got rid of class rank my freshman year. It was a good move for us. We were the most rigorous local school, and had five different magnet programs, so people were taking schedules that were just not at all comparable. How do you rank the kid who takes four years of double-credit (counting as two classes) piano studio or ballet against the kid in a math/science/technology magnet? Other than the commonality of required subjects (which could be taken at a variety of different levels, making them still hard to compare), people’s experiences didn’t look anything alike.</p>
<p>I can see how class rank can be beneficial to the universities. However, I see so many students taking weighted grade classes that they have no interest in or not taking unweighted grade classes that they are interested in…to “play the class rank game”. Perhaps class rank calculations need to be based on core classes only?</p>
<p>Class rank gives great information on a student when used in combination with the rigor of curriculm and the GPA. Some universities are numbers driven, and when a high school doesn’t rank, I believe they put their students at a disadvantage to those who come from schools that rank. All things being equal, it would be reasonable for a university to select the ranked student. Rank gives the university more confidence about the student they are selecting.</p>
<p>Class rank simply is not meaningful at some high schools. For example, my kids’ high school, which does not give class ranks, is very large (4400 students) and offers enormous depth and breadth of coursework, from lowest to highest levels. Class rank offers no meaningful comparison here, due to the vastly different paths students take. There is simply no fair way to say student A outranks students B and C when the students take vastly different coursework, all of it rigorous (e.g., the top musicians vs. the top scientists vs. the top writers). That’s why the school eliminated class rank, and that’s why no one misses it. College admission officers are fully capable of properly comparing students without class rank. They compare using course rigor, weighted GPAs, and percentile GPA bands.</p>
<p>Exactly. When high schools rank, students can and will game the system. A course such as senior Honors Orchestra can lower the gpa at a school where APs are weighted. Thus, such an elective is not taken.</p>
<p>Our very large public ranked students but did not weight grades. Therefore, those who challenged themselves by taking the rigorous course loads were penalized in the class rankings unless they pulled the A’s in the AP. A 3.5 put you in the bottom half of the class and gave honor cords to those who had never taken an advanced or AP class throughout their high school career. </p>
<p>Current private school does not rank although they may use quintiles (and I think that is internal and not for colleges). The point is that colleges actually have to look at the transcript and use the school profile to determine rigor and college preparedness.</p>
<p>The point is… if a school does rank, the methodology is all over the map which makes it a very imperfect measure.</p>
<p>Keep in mind, there are varying degrees of ranking…</p>
<p>My school used to send your actual class rank. </p>
<p>Now, because they felt that hurt too many students, all they do is send a piece of paper that says 10% - 3.963, 25% - 3.(something) 50% - 3. (something) and 75% 2.(something) </p>
<p>And then they send your GPA. So if you have a 4.1 they don’t know if that means your number one, or if your near the 10%. </p>
<p>The only exception is for anyone in the top 10 can ask for my High School to notify this to colleges they apply to.</p>
<p>Our school is private and draws in a lot of good students. As a result, a 3.8 weighted is about the 50% cut-off. The schools deems that a disadvantage vs kids applying to the same colleges from less competetive schools, so our school doies not rank. (They will notify the top 4 students of each’s rank and let the colleges know. If you are No. 5 of 365, you are “top 10%.”</p>
<p>My school is a highly competitive private (85 kids in each grade) and does not provide precise rank. They don’t even give deciles either. What they do is that they state the highest GPA and the lowest. :P</p>
<p>Because we are in Texas, rank is a necessary evil, yet every ISD has it’s own way of calculating rank. In our HS, the ranks are based on the requirements for graduation. 4 credit hours each of math, science, english and social studies, 2 credit hours of fine arts, 1.5 of physical education, 2 of computer science, 3 credit hours of Foreign Language, and 1/2 credit each of Health and speech and last but not least 3.5 credit hours of electives. Now, there are many other classes that can be taken with the way classes are, for example, my daughter will have 32 credits, yet only the 26 required for graduation count toward rank. This allows the football players to be players, the dancers to dance the actors to act, without punishing them for their EC choices.</p>
<p>For every AP and honors classes are weighted, creating very high averages, ie, 110.09, etc. There are no 3.75, 4.0, etc. So I personally like the rank system. If you have a 90 grade average, there are many people that would say you were a good student, but in this HS, it will put you in the bottom quartile. Rigor + Achievement = High Rank. The school also assigns rank as a number. There is only 1 person at #1 and 1 person at #2 etc. So for D’s class, an example would be 4/658. Fourth position in a class of 658. I find rank to be more telling of a students success based on their unique environment instead of a reported GPA.</p>
<p>But collegeshopping, you think rank is “more telling” if it is done the way your high school does it.</p>
<p>When our hs ranked students, no classes were weighted at all (including AP Calculus and AP Biology); all classes were worth the same amount of credit (including PE, AP Calculus, and consumer math); and an A+ in a class (any class) was worth 4.33 on a 4.0 scale. If you wanted to have the highest GPA and rank in your class, you did not take the most rigorous classes; you took classes in which A+'s were relatively easy to get.</p>