<p>I asked my counselor about my class rank</p>
<p>and he told me that our school doesn't rank. </p>
<p>Then, how is my academic quality going to be evaluated?</p>
<p>only by SAT/ACT??</p>
<p>I would explain to your counselor that class rank is very important in the academic evaluation for WP admissions, and ask if the school will calculate a rank for you. If they will not provide a class rank, WP will calculate one for you using your SATS/ACTs as a benchmark.</p>
<p>Often a high school counselor will submit a description of the school, including percentage of students who graduate, who attend college, who take AP/IB classes, etc. Also, some schools that do not rank will inform colleges where you fall in the class, i.e. top 10%, top 25%, etc.</p>
<p>You may want to ask your counselor just what he submits to colleges.</p>
<p>My son's high school does not rank its students, nor does it allow the College Placement Office to put its students into a percentage group. Instead, it tells any college that asks about rank that it is a college prep school that is selective in its admissions, that no student has ever achieved a four point and that in my son's case, one-third of the students in his graduating class were National Merit Semi-Finalists or Finalists. That seemed to work for my son who is a member of the Class of 2011. At the time I was told by folks who held themselves out to be familar with West Point Admissions that there are a number of schools that do not rank and that West Point has some internal way of assigning a general class rank to each applicant. They did not know if that involved assigning a specific rank based on grade point, or whether they somehow manipulated SAT scores to assign a general rank. In any event you won't be the first person applying to West Point without a class rank. Rest assured that have devised a way to compensate for that missing ingredient in your scholastic score.</p>
<p>We went round and round with our guidance office last year with this issue. The transcript the school submitted for our cadet listed only his "percentage grouping". I was very frustrated about that... UNTIL we spoke with an admissions rep from USMA. He told us USMA admissions will look at their ACT/SAT scores and come up with a class rank in place of it. When I told our guidance counselor that, she looked me square in the eye and said, "They can't do that! They have no idea what their grades are compared to others in the school." I thought, "lady they are the U.S. military... they can do whatever they darn well please!!!" </p>
<p>Now, in reality, this may have actually been a positive thing in our son's case. Our cadet's high school class was very competitive with many high achievers. Since the school does not add weight to the grades of higher level coursework, several who took the regular levels of courses would have outranked our cadet. In his case, that would not have been a true representation of his abilities compared to the classmates.</p>
<p>Best of luck as you go through this process!</p>
<p>It's interesting to note that West Point is obviously "very competitive with many high achievers", it "does not add weight to the grades of higher level coursework", so potentially, others who take regular levels of courses could outrank cadets who took higher levels of that course, yet West Point still ranks each member of each class. The very conditions which guidance counselors at non-ranking High Schools use as their reasons not to rank exist at West Point, yet West Point ranks its cadets.</p>
<p>One reason it appears to work at West Point where it might not at a "non-ranking" "competitive high school" relates to the comment above where:</p>
<p>"Since the school does not add weight to the grades of higher level coursework, several who took the regular levels of courses would have outranked our cadet"</p>
<p>is that West Point appears to put more pressure on students who can do the more advanced work to step up into the harder level class. I don't think they allow too many cadets to "lay in the weeds" so they can ace courses that are obviously no challenge to them (even though an A in a "medium level math course" that meets 5 hours a week weighs as much as an A in a 5 hour a week "advanced level" math course.)</p>
<p>In any case, class rank at USMA (as it is at the other academy's I assume) bears no small significance to posting and branching opportunities---it is just one of those little "life's lessons" that USMA teaches along the way---in their professional life (both in and out of the Army) they will always be ranked, whether it appears fair or not.</p>
<p>Oh, they definitely rank trust me. I needed to no my rank for my NROTC application and my USCGA application. My school apparently does not rank...they just do it in percentages (top 10, top 20 etc.) However, when I explained to my guidance counselor what I needed it for she gave me my rank without hesitation. I actually find it insulting that my school is willing to recognize their athletes without hesitation but when it comes to recognizing students based on their academic record, they dont want to "lower anyone's self-esteem." We dont even have a valedictorian or salutitorian.</p>
<p>Is the non-ranking policy something that only private high schools do? Im not sure I've even heard of a public school that doesn't rank, or is it more of a function of schools with small enrollments?</p>
<p>Well, I go to a public school but we are a small school. I think that maybe we dont rank because of our size. My grade only has 135 students in it and the difference is ranks are very small. For example, I am ranked number 11 out of 135 in my grade. The difference between me and the person in 1st is one/tenth of a point. THis is good for me because it makes it easier to "climb the ladder." However, I still think people should be recognized no matter how small the difference between 1st and last.</p>
<p>My kids went to a public high school with over 4,000 students. Ranking went out the window a few years ago. They only report percentile ranges.</p>
<p>Many schools do not rank. Many have stopped ranking. The prep schools do not rank. Colleges will assign ranks to those kids without ranks from their high schools and will do so based on other data.</p>
<p>I have two daughters currently in high school, one in a prep school and one in a public high school. The prep school does not rank at all and the the public high school only ranks the top fifteen percent. I assume the reason the public high school has limited ranking is that in Texas kids in the top ten percent of their class are guaranteed a spot at the University of Texas (but not necessarily in the college of their choice) and students in the top fifteen percent of their class are guaranteed a spot at Texas A & M. In listening to administrators talk about the no ranking policy they believe that it is in place to help students, not hurt them. More interesting is the discussion about "weighting" AP and advanced classes, compared to regular classes and the decision that students may make to try to obtain a certain grade point or rank by not taking the more challenging classes.</p>
<p>
[quote]
More interesting is the discussion about "weighting" AP and advanced classes, compared to regular classes and the decision that students may make to try to obtain a certain grade point or rank by not taking the more challenging classes.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Very good point. Please do not sacrifice your course selection for a high class rank. Class rank and gpa is simply a broad indicator of how you perform compared to your peers - it is a starting point.
The transcript tells the whole story.</p>
<p>My cadet's public hs of 1900 (and in fact all the schools in our district) stopped ranking 2 years ago to discourage students from 'gaming' the system and to encourage them to take electives. The more competitive students would either not take unweighted courses or only take them 'pass/fail' so as not to hurt their GPA. Students in the IB/AP weighted grade programs generally have GPAs > 4.0 so getting a 4.0/A in an elective hurt their GPA and ranking. Most elective courses were unweighted (eg choir, non-IB art) so students fighting for that top 5-10% would simply not take them if the teacher did not permit 'pass/fail'. The whole issue went to the school board. Anyway, it seems to have worked to some degree to release the dectile only. They also got rid of valedictorian and salutatorian. After the first year, no one missed it. I think they were relieved to get the pressure off.</p>
<p>One college admissions officer told us they got around the ranking problem by calculating their own GPA - throw out electives and unweight core courses. They also told us that universities are well aware of the reputations of various high schools and definitely take that into consideration. </p>
<p>The dectile ranking did not keep my d from getting an LOA at USMA or USNA.</p>
<p>ALTHOUGH WP says that they do not give more weight to harder classes, they MIGHT adjust your GPA accordingly. I remember on my USAFA application that the GPA they showed on their website was higher than my actual high school GPA.</p>
<p>So from the above discussion it appears that high schools that say they don't rank, actually do, they just dont want to tell the colleges anything more than percentile?</p>
<p>requiem--"ALTHOUGH WP says that they do not give more weight to harder classes"
?
WP uses the GPA the high schools provide and if there is a weighted GPA they will use it. That is why they use class rank and standardized test scores to help balance things out with candidates from other schools to come up with their candidate score.
What WP does do is not give extra weight to harder classes AT WP while you are a cadet--weight appears to be strictly via class hours per week.</p>
<p>hmm. That is odd. I guess WP and USAFA do things a bit differently.</p>
<p>The bottom line is that WP will calculate a class rank for a candidate if their school refuses to provide one...</p>
<p>The candidate's academic score is calculated using SAT/ACT scores and Class Rank as objective measures, and subjective adjustments are made depending on courses taken, grades achieved, difficulty of courses taken versus available courses, school profile etc.</p>
<p>The method used to compute class rank can muddy the waters as well. A few months ago, when my S had his transcript as of jr year sent to WP, his rank was shown as 57/409. This morning, we attended a counseling session where all the latest progress reports, test scores, etc were reviewed. His rank is now shown as 40/412. Since no new grades have been reported, we asked why the rank had changed. The counselor said "Oh, when we ran the transcript reports over the summer, we used a different method to compute the rankings. The new numbers are correct".</p>
<p>The two methods used to compute ranks are basically a choice the school makes as to how to deal with "ties" in GPA. Let's say the top 5 GPA's were 3.9, 3.9, 3.8, 3.8, and 3.7. Method #1 (used on the reports run over the summer) would report the ranks as 1, 1, 3, 3, and 5. Method #2 (the method they have always used in the past and the method used for the corrected rankings) would show the ranks as 1, 1, 2, 2, and 3.</p>
<p>If a high school or prep school has an official policy of no ranking, then the USMA admissions office will still process the application. Just note on the application that ranking is officially not provided from your school. It will very likely not influence the applicants acceptance decision. If the school does have rankings available that information must be supplied.</p>