We just had that very same conversation today. My middle son who is in the application/decision cycle now attends an IB high school in the northeast. There are approximately 80 students in his class of high performers. No class rank and unweighted GPA only… all competing for the same T20 schools. We wonder what his outcomes would have been it he had stayed at the local township high school and over-performed amongst his peers.
Maybe some years you are right, but this year is an anomaly. Many of the public schools were online and cheating was rampant. Private schools were in person so cheating was not an issue. This resulted in significantly inflated grades at the public school.
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You’re right and that’s what I heard as well. Some schools in our surrounding area permitted open book and many kids were online while our school was always in person 5 days, I have to believe though AOs must be looking at 4 years of grades and course rigor, APs taking Physics C and Cal BC etc, and not only junior year of receiving As. I also think maybe there is some luck involved. My D22 was accepted to UVA and Northeastern engineering when many of her peers who look similar on paper were not. Our school does not rank and I would say almost all of the “top” students submitted standardized test scores.
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NJdad07746,
My D is in an ib diploma program here in VA. I have been shocked by the volume of work over the last few years. I imagine undergrad will be easy now! My D is definitely going to attend UVA via the deferred admission program at the college of Wise. She is a little disappointed to be on the waiting list, but even making it to the waiting list is a huge accomplishment given the crazy number of applications now compared to just a few years ago!
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That is the same conversation we have periodically around here. Now that I have two in college we are very thankful for their years at their college prep school because they are extremely well prepared, have strong writing skills their school spent years developing, have great time management skills (due to their high homework situation which our county school does not have) and are performing very well. Their college “results“ might have been better coming from our county school, but we would do it again.
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I disagree… I think ranking kids should go away. I do live in Virginia, my kids go to a private school that does not rank, but there is a public school right down the road, if you get all A’s you are ranked 1 and Valedictorian. So every year they would have like 60 Valedictorians. A child can have a poor year due to health reasons, a family divorce, the death of a parent, and their rank are killed. In the state of Texas, they would be out. I think ranking kids only benefit the most privilege, who have access to private tutors, parents at home to assist with homework, etc…
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Exactly. I told my graduating HS senior he is well prepared to tackle college with having successfully completed his rigorous IB program. He has ten T20 schools to hear from in the next two weeks. Hoping that he gets into a program that will allow him to be challenged and at the same time grow. He opted for staying in the UVA waitlist but I don’t see that materializing. Fingers crossed for all our successful students.
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Yes, in this area only the large public schools rank. Small schools, charters and privates do not. Though most kids in those schools would be less of a Bell Curve.
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Out of curiosity, how would you like colleges to evaluate those 60 valedictorians from the public school? Same grades, test optional, no rank-close to indistinguishable academically, although obviously there actually would be great variation not apparent on the record. May as well have a lottery at that point.
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Colleges don’t just see the rank. They also see the entire transcript, every class that was taken for four years, and can make a lot of comparisons and judgements from there. Two kids might have the same rank, but maybe one took harder classes, or more consistent with their intended major, or maybe someone with a lower rank actually challenged themselves more. From the transcript they will also be able to see trends. Were grades better in 9th and 10th grade and trending down or the other way? What else in the application might explain that? Ranks across schools can be compared by looking at the historical ranks from those high schools. UVA knows which high schools inflate grades, and how the students perform. A good portion of this is subjective, it doesn’t just boil down to a number be it rank or SAT score or GPA.
I am assuming this holistic review is done within a 10-15 minute review of the applicant candidate’s file, no? I was told by the Admissions director at Boston College that given the number of applications received a limited amount of time is set aside for this review. Therefore all this information needs to be readily available including each high school’s profile summary.
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These students are not indistinguishable academically, some get all As with heavy APs, others with regular classes or technical and performing arts academies (a half-day program within this high school). Holistically, extracurricular activities, work experience, essays, doing courses that meet their intended major, etc… should distinguish the applicants. Even the top 6% of students in Texas are not guaranteed their major, just an acceptance. Not all valedictorians are created equally, and colleges know this.
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Really? 40,000 high schools in the US, and we expect colleges to know them all? A brief glance at the course list and grades is all they have time for at BU, one of their admissions officers told me. But maybe some schools do a deep dive academically. I doubt it.
I pointed out that the applicant pool may be hard to distinguish academically, recognizing that ECs and other factors figure into the overall assessment. Of course, those are often far easier to manipulate and more dependent on family income than grades.
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I guess I am not sure what you are trying to say. I was supporting my argument that class rank needs to go away completely. As I said my kids are in a school that doesn’t rank and it should be like that for everyone. That is it. A number #1 rank in 1 school is not an apple to apple comparison to a #1 in another school. Actually during a Yale information session in my town they did comment about how this one school ranks a large number of students as #1, and it can’t be used to compare a #1 student at a school 3 miles down the road when that #1 is truly a remarkable student. Actually, your responses do strengthen the argument on why schools should not rank kids.
I honestly dont care whether they rank or not. But with fewer and fewer data points, and crowding at the 4.0 gpa level due to inflation, AOs at UVA and similar schools have few grounds for reliable admission decisions.
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In my daughter’s graduating class of 330, there are 37 ranked #1. These are all the IB diploma kids who know exactly how many AP classes they need to take starting on day 1, to get the highest weighted averages, in addition to their IB diploma. This means that a student who does not take every AP class offered, or who gets one A- in four years, was automatically not in the top 10% of the graduating class. So the #2 ranked student is number 38 out of 330.
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Just sad from the standpoint of the actual values they are learning. Take the straight path to get the 4.0. Actually, I don’t believe that GPA has a correlation to work success. Some kids are perfectionist and don’t work well with others. Some kids might be in that next tier down but have great social skills and buoy up in their careers. Usually, it’s the combination of hard skills, aptitude,attitude and ability to get along with others that helps in the workplace.
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One of the largest school districts in our state (CO) announced this morning, actually, that it is eliminating valedictorian recognition and class rank, as it is an outdated model and inconsistent with the notion that learning is not a competition.
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Well, before we know it, they will just have kids send in a letter saying they want to go to that college with nothing else. No GPA’s, scores, rankings, etc. The AO’s can just pick by zip code or they can change the criteria from day to day. Nothing much will change. Results will still be random, uncertain and not really based on any reality. Guess, I am just jaded by the application cycle. My kids acceptances and rejections are totally random. Makes planning impossible. And I find the notion of everything will work out, dumb. People want to have a connection between what a kid did and acceptances. Throwing everything out the window is insane. Ok, rant over.
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Lol, I get it.
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