Weighted classes and ranking -- are they worth it?

Pre-College Issues High School Life
1

<p>Lots of schools and districts rank their students based on GPA, both weighted and unweighted. In the end, is it worth it? "Worth it" meaning does it really encourage the better aspects of education, does it really increase information about one's potential, and does it really increase incentive to take a class?</p>

<p>At my school, we rank both weighted and unweighted GPAs. Weighted credits are considered as Honors or AP courses and get factored into the GPA via a formula. Getting a B in a weighted course, doesn't equate to an A in a regular course here.</p>

<p>Education, in an ideal world, would be for one to learn more about subjects that interest oneself. To me it seems as if weighting and ranking encourages students (especially the competitive ones) to go take classes to get the highest GPA and the highest rank possible, completely defeating the idea of learning more for the sake of learning. Our society seems to be at least partially inbred with this attitude as well; colleges see the rank as an important factor, sometimes missing out on the classes taken for enjoyment. I'm probably giving too much credit to the human want for knowledge, but with what we have now, it seems that even a little want would be better than none. Extracurriculars aren't enough to tell who a person is; academics are necessary for a full picture. The weight and rank are meaningless to learn more about a person if this situation occurs.</p>

<p>It seems to me that the sole purpose of ranking is to get an understanding of where one stands on the tier of GPA. It's just another measurement tool to find out how you're doing and how far ahead others are compared to you. The ranking system can be stimulus for others to take more challenging courses and get ahead in GPA and rank. However, if the only reason why you take those hard classes is to get ahead, the rank is only a meaningless gauge of how one tries to take meaningless classes that one’s not interested in.</p>

<p>Finally, when looking at incentive, it's mainly the idea of numbers. The numbers may look pretty, but they mean nothing in the end when all things add up together for knowledge. There shouldn’t be any incentive to take a class; a course should be taken because of interest. Again, the ranking and weight system both take away from this, rewarding those that take harder course, but not necessarily more interested and they probably won’t get out as much from the course.</p>

<p>Many places have stopped using the rank and weight systems. I think that’s probably the best way to go; education should be for education’s sake, not for numbers.</p>

2

<p>One of the questions raised by your essay here is, what is the purpose of high school? Is it to prepare us for the future pragmatically (ie, for college and for our careers) or is it for us to "enjoy" intellectually? I think the individual choice of where we choose to balance ourselves on this issue results from our own personality and goals.</p>

<p>What I think you may be missing is the fact that, in the end, being an interesting person who actually loves learning (as shown through ECs [not quantity, but quality and contribution], recs, essay) but ranked 20/400 will get you farther in the college admissions process than being a bookworm with no personality ranked 1/400.</p>

3

<p>JimmyEatWorld brings up a good point. Some people will take AP classes because they actually want to learn the material and they really enjoy it. Others take them to merely give them an edge in college admissions. The sad thing is that every year it becomes increasingly harder to get into top schools, so it gives students a big disadvantage if they aren't taking the toughest classes offered in school. If a school doesn't rank, the student might be at a slight disadvantage because adcoms can't tell how the students stack up against others in the same school. </p>

<p>In the end, the people that are truely passionate about learning are more likely to get the highest grades anyway. Some kid in your class might take all AP/Honors classes, but it will be tough for him/her to get straight A's if he/she is not totally passionate about his/her learning. And plus there's that extra time committment that is involved. Taking all weighted classes might require one to sacrafice a couple ECs. I know at my school some of the AP classes require you to do projects outside of class, which will require you to sacrifice some free time.</p>