<p>Oh god, what has it become.
Only 3 years ago, my brother got valedictorian for simply getting all As in the IB program. Keep in mind, he only had 6 classes a day. But still, by simply working hard at the courses provided, he got the title.</p>
<p>When simply performing well in the IB program was good enough, now it has become a cutthroat competition. Now, kids can take AP online classes simply to boost their weighted GPA and go hire in class rank. Not to mention that we now take 7 classes, so kids can take AP courses as electives. We label these people AP whores, primarily because of the excessive need to boost rank by taking AP courses regardless of actual interest or direction. It's horrible.</p>
<p>Not to mention the fact that kids can become valedictorian even if they don't have all As, and others do have all As. It really annoys me off, especially since I have all As, but others are ranked higher than me despite so. I am fine not being valedictorian, but I just hope the people ahead of me actually deserve to be in front of me.</p>
<p>Question: Should class rank be determined by weighted or unweighted GPA? While many can make the argument that unweighted GPA does not take into account rigor, most kids who do get all As usually go for the rigorous courses.</p>
<p>weighted imo, although your unweighted gpa should account for something. </p>
<p>and nothing wrong with taking lots of APs.</p>
<p>People with harder classes/more As deserve higher rank.</p>
<p>I wish my school ranked…</p>
<p>Class rank should be determined by weighted GPA. Period.</p>
<p>Obviously weighted GPA. However, if your school wishes to curb people taking excessive APs, they could have broader graduation requirements (ex. language and gym).</p>
<p>Why do you see competition as so bad? I think it’s good that kids try to compete by doing as much as they can to get first place. I think you don’t like it because you’re to lazy to be as good as them so you come on here and bash on them for doing better than you.</p>
<p>Weighted. You should be rewarded for being an “AP” whore. To get a outstanding gpa like you say you have to manage a B or A in the classes. in that case they earned it.
Although it does seem a little too far but if they chose to you can’t really stop them.</p>
<p>If you can’t beatem , joinem</p>
<p>If your school is such that there are a lot of kids taking AP courses on line and doing well, it will be reflected in the school profile. Being first or second in rigorous school where a lot of the kids go to selective colleges is not necessary. Also many times taking more courses is not going to up your gpa. Getting an A in 4 courses, yields the same GPA as getting an A in 10 of them. It would also show in the transcript how a student is taking a course, I would think.</p>
<p>Here is the problem: what is the goal of taking Ap Psychology if you already take IB Psychology? What meaningful thing do you gain in doing this?</p>
<p>@GiveMeReason
If you want to be in first then you do what you have to do.</p>
<p>And this is one of the many reasons why there is no class rank in my school</p>
<p>Definitely weighted, no question. Why should we punish the students who take on the extra load of AP classes? They are working the hardest. If you do poorly in an AP class that still hurts your GPA after all. Those “AP whores” don’t have it easy unless of course your school has a really poor AP program that churns out 1s and 2s as AP scores. In that case, the issue isn’t with the ranking system, but the quality of the school’s courses. </p>
<p>Students obviously shouldn’t be allowed to do something like take AP psych but then also IB psych! I can’t imagine how school administrators would ever allow that. </p>
<p>What bothers me though is that my school only gives out weighted GPAs, leading many to apply to more selective schools believing they’re all set with a 3.9 GPA. It would have been really nice to have them give both a weighted and non-weighted GPAs just to give us a realistic picture of where we are. </p>
<p>What also bothers me a little is how my school is rather an underachiever haven with B and C students riding on AP and honors weight while in the top 10 percent of their class.</p>
<p>Wow. Nobody even cares about class rank at our school. We don’t even find out about class rank until the second semester of our senior year, and even then it’s no big deal. =p</p>
<p>Personally, I think it would be fun to have competition for class rank. I mean, people do it with varsity athletics all the time, why not academics?</p>
<p>My school doesn’t rank.</p>
<p>My school doesn’t have Valedictorians…</p>
<p>@RaeRae88
Colleges do.</p>
<p>I think we shouldn’t be allowed to find out our class ranks until graduation. Seriously, senior slide is such a major problem at my school!</p>
<p>I think it would be better for it to be based on unweighted, since I think it should matter more how you do in the classes you take than the type of classes you take. I would imagine people would still take plenty of APs to impress colleges/challenge themselves, so I don’t think this would make everyone stop taking hard classes.</p>
<p>The IB program is hard as heck. Just saying. I know kids who worked so dang hard to keep their grades up with IB. They would seriously do 12 hours of homework a night. They deserve that valedictorian title if that’s what they earn. AP=IB in my school so anyone can get that. You act like IB is a joke. It’s really not. It’s incredibly easy to get a 4.0 unweighted with regular classes. In my school’s regular classes are a joke. Unweighted should not come into play when determining class rank.</p>
<p>Why are you mad? Valedictorian doesn’t mean anything. Yes it is useless to take IB and AP Psych, but they are doing the word so they should get the credit they deserve even if what they are doing is not logical. I will never take a BS ap class because it is a waste of time cuz i can self-study it so easily(Ap econ, psych, apes, stat, world, euro…). I instead prefer to take electives that are even harder, but do not get the same weight(Modern Physics, a complement class and same difficulty and workload to AP Physics C, the hardest ap at our school). i dont care about valedictorian.</p>
<p>Weighted. Otherwise, you could have a person with a 98 UW GPA going for their IB Diploma, and a person with a 99 average who has 5 music classes and regular English. And the latter would be valedictorian.</p>