Why are colleges using class rank in admissions?

Parents Forum
81

<p>Can't help but chime in. </p>

<p>My D's HS had a curious approach. Publicly, and on the profile, they stated they did not rank, but provided percentiles. Those it turns out were based soley on GPA, so had no real world bases. In private, and it turns out, selectively w/r/t college admissions, they provided class rank. Was it totally honest? Don't know, but it avoided class rank mania in a school with many high performing kids.</p>

<p>A big part of the problem in this discussion is that folks here are looking at very different higher ed segments in the same way. Here's a few observations:</p>

<ul>
<li><p>The elite private colleges can afford a holistic approach to admissions, and have long experience in evaluating kids from elite prep schools, among other nontraditional sources of students. Think about it - what percentage of HS kids in the US go to private schools? Yet what percentage of the elites come from private schools? 30-50%. So, for the elites, class rank, indeed any numerical admissions formula, just isn't used.</p></li>
<li><p>State unis are a whole different world, largely because of the political atmosphere in which they operate, IMHO. Hence the strongly numerical approach to admissions, honors programs etc. Keep in mind, for instance, that the purpose of the honors program at Cinci probably is NOT to identify the strongest students in the entering class and give them the education they deserve. No, the program purpose is no doubt much more political than that, especially given Cinci's position in the Ohio higher ed heirarchy.</p></li>
<li><p>Even the so called elite state unis tend to be much more numerical (formula driven) in their admissions policies. Take a look at U. Mich or Berkeley as examples, and contrast them with Northwestern or Stanford.</p></li>
<li><p>Specialty colleges, like RISD, or a performing arts conservatory are a completely different category. Of course they don't use class rank. Many don't even give much attention to grades. They look at portfolio, auditions etc. </p></li>
</ul>

<p>Now let's talk about High Schools. Given the diversity of HS in the US, whether it be size, SES, public/private/magnet, local political atmosphere, is it any wonder that it is hard to generalize or find common approaches? (any wonder college admissions sometimes looks like a dart board???).</p>

<ul>
<li> How can we possibly compare a Milton Academy to Texas based Highland Park HS, to a HS in inner LA, to Montgomery County, MD schools, to Massachusetts based Lexington High? Each school exists in a radically different setting, with completely different demographics, politics, aspirations etc.<br></li>
</ul>

<p>The perfect system does not exist. There will always be perceived unfairness. But that's life. Has anyone ever been any more happy to learn what a co-worker gets paid than to learn where your kid's classmate got in? In either case, we feel we deserve more pay than the other person, and our kid deserves a better school. There will always be gamers. There will always be those that get breaks for reasons we will never understand or know, whether it be promotions or admissions.</p>

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<p>mol10e, I'm sorry that I forgot to specify, but I meant that kids are being penalized, in COLLEGE ADMISSIONS, for going to a competitve HS. I personally would still try to send my child (I'm only 17) to the best HS in town (within reason).</p>

<p>sybbie, I cannot find Stuyvesant statistics. Even though they may have placed many kids in elite schools, how many over qualified candidates did not get in? This school is composed of the smartest kids in NYC. I've seen that with some elite HS, the elite colleges take a certain, relatively set number of kids each year. So if you're not part of that top cadre of kids in your HS (however many the college chooses to take), no matter how you compare to the general applicant pool, you will not get accepted. I was surprised Cornell took so many.
Colleges feel that they can only take so many from a given HS.</p>

<p>You say that those rejected smart kids were rejected because of a lack of ECs. You cannot make that distinction, because you do not know. </p>

<p>Schools proclaim their adherence to "geographic diversity." Is it that hard to believe them?</p>

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<p>"So, for the elites, class rank, indeed any numerical admissions formula, just isn't used."</p>

<p>I am not sure if there is a strong basis for such conclusion. </p>

<ol>
<li>Percentage of students who report a class rank</li>
</ol>

<p>Here we have to assume that the percentage is derived from the self-reported information. Any school in the country will attempt to report the highest ranking possible through its percentage of top 10%. At the most selective schools, 50% of the students might originate from elite prep school that do not report an OFFICIAL ranking, thus there is NO incentive to include them in the statistics reported to the US News of the world. </p>

<ol>
<li>Do or did adcoms USE ranking?</li>
</ol>

<p>Unless we are prepared to completely ignore the information shared by authors such as Michele Hernandez or Chuck Hughes, it is fair to assume that a numerical analysis DOES exist. Acronyms such as AI and CRS did not show out of the blue or were the result of their vivid imagination. For instance, it is absolutely clear that the ranking influences the AI and that a top ranked student at a small school suffers when compared to a student at a large high school. </p>

<p>Again, no absolute value is given to the ranking. Being valedictorian at Boonies HS won't amount to a whole lot if the school is underperforming, has no history with the elite school, and the student does not CONFIRM his rank with stellar standardized scores. However, the ranking -be it official or derived- plays a role among students from the SAME school. If three students from Harvard Westlake are in the final selection group, there has to be a COMPELLING reason to reach for number 11 and reject number 6 and 7.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
You say that those rejected smart kids were rejected because of a lack of ECs. You cannot make that distinction, because you do not know.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>That is not what I said, what I said was, </p>

<p>while objective measures grades, scores and ranks get you over one hurdle it is most likley the subjective measures (recs, essays, ecs) that add other dimenisions to the students and in conjection with the objective measures that moe the application to the admit, deny or wait pile.</p>

<p>I also said most private colleges build classes according to the inistitutional mission that they are trying to fulfill. So inspite of grades, scores, top magnets etc. the inistiutional mission tops everything</p>

<p>Ashernm, I think that you are looking at the admissions process using only grades and scores as a criteria for admission when the admissions process especially at selective schools are simply not that black and white.</p>

<p>Since the elite schools tend to take a wholistic view of the applications, the subjective factors are taken into consideration. If the school needs an oboe player, or a tight end, or is looking to attract low income students, or female engineers, artist, good deed doers, etc those students will be admitted sometimes over "higher scoring" students. If a school is looking to attract URM, or make the alumni happy, then those factors will lead the inistitutional mission.</p>

<p>In many of the NE selective schools it is not unusual to find the largest number of students from NY, CA adn MA because they are heavily populated states and all have at any given time a large number of students applying to school. NYC has over 1 million students in the public school system alone.</p>

<p>while stuyvesant does attract the best and the brightest not every student that gets accepted to stuyvesant chooses to attend (same with the ivies not every student admitted attends) . Because that student does decide to attend another school, it does not mean that they will not do well. I know my D turned down stuyvesant to attend h.s. (the # 1 public middle school which also had a high school ) to be with her friends. This is h.s. that graduates less than 100 kids per year but still sends kids to the ivies and elite schools each year. The school had the same academic rigor, (but not the slew of APs) that stuyvesant offers but in a much more laid back and collaborative environment that was a great fit for her.</p>

<p>In the NYS public school system all students are required to take the NYS regents exam in different subject areas (sciences, math, english, foreign language). The regents grades are also reflected on the transcript. If i attend Joe and willy h.s and I get a score of 100 on all of my regents exams does that make me smarter than the stuyvesant student who only got 98s?</p>

<p>Midwood high school in brooklyn turns out more intel winners than bronx science and stuyvesant, yet on face it is neighborhood school. At the end of the day, there are plenty of schools where one can get a good educations and not all students need or want to be in the "top schools". Despite this fact, they still tend to do well.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
Taxguy, that is NOT what is happening in Texas. The best chance for gaining an automatic acceptance is to take many AP and honors classes. The "game" is to find the best GPA boosters.

[/quote]

This is actually quite common at most of the smaller school districts in Texas. When you don't have AP courses offered, the top GPAs are determined by Home Ec, Typing, Ag, Band, etc. This is precisely why UT is trying to get the law changed, or at least add a curiculm track to the requirement. The current classes are filled with underqualified students when students from strong districts are forced out of state. And yes, it is an AA issue as witnessed by the fact that all of the Hispanic state representatives opposed any change in the system in this legislative session.</p>

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<p>I think our legislature recently revised the law so that only students taking the hardest courseload possible would be admitted under the 10% rule. (I could be wrong...but I think that is what was done to prevent "Basketweaving" from allowing Student A to be #1 while "AP Calculus" landed someone else at a lower rank.)</p>

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<p>"The current classes are filled with underqualified students when students from strong districts are forced out of state. And yes, it is an AA issue as witnessed by the fact that all of the Hispanic state representatives opposed any change in the system in this legislative session."</p>

<p>Do not be too quick to conclude that only minorities value the 10% rule. Some of the greatest beneficiaries are rural schools and very large public schools -the Bubba type of schools where football is still king. In a way, you could see the 10% rule as an AA for large white underperforming schools. There is a dark angle in the 10% rule: many students of poor districts do not even bother to apply despite being auto-admits. They do not consider UT and especially Texas A&M great schools for them, or simply cannot afford the tuition and financial aid packages. </p>

<p>But UT is not necessarily to blame for this!</p>

<p>The reality is that the large school systems like UT or UC are facing a tremendous challenge of devising a system that will comply with their stated mission to educate almost all their citizens and address the rapid changes in demographics. While the UT system is far from perfect, I think that there are few models that could be emulated. In particular, it seems that the correlation between demographics and student population in the flagship schools in California shows how easy a well devised system can spin out of control through abuses and manipulations. </p>

<p>What is the real impact of the 10% rule? UT does not fill its freshman class with top 10% applicants - 66% is the real number. </p>

<ul>
<li> First-time freshman applications for the summer/fall 2004 semesters were down (-1,511) from last year's all-time high of 24,519, but that still represents the second largest number of
applications in the University's history. (See Table 1.)</li>
<li> The number of admits was 11,788 (+2.5% from 2003) and was back to levels typical of the late 1990s. The admit rate for 2004 was 51%.</li>
<li> Of the 11,788 admits, 6,796 enrolled for the fall 2004 semester for a yield rate of 58%.</li>
<li> The number of top 10% students enrolled in 2004 (4,241) was down very slightly (-48). However, because the size of the entering freshman class was larger, the percentage of top 10% students declined from 70% to 66% of Texas high school graduates. (See Table 2b.)<br></li>
</ul>

<p>Source of full report: <a href="http://www.utexas.edu/student/admissions/research/HB588-Report7.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.utexas.edu/student/admissions/research/HB588-Report7.pdf&lt;/a> </p>

<p>The full report does a good job in breaking down all application statistics and first-year performance. Incidentally, one could notice how well the SAT tracks the first year performance of freshmen. </p>

<p>It is undeniable that some students are victimized in Texas, but the problems stems mostly from the abuses and gamesmanship of the applicants. I would also like to see additional conditions on the top 10% rule to ensure a minimum level of preparation, especially for UT-Austin. Unless it changed in the past 24 months, the top 10% students has a choice of schools, but not the programs. As far as I know, the CAP (Coordinated Admissions Program) does not apply to the top 10% and that the only remedial program requires to start school in the summer versus the fall. See <a href="http://www.utexas.edu/student/admissions/research/CAPreport-CAP01.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.utexas.edu/student/admissions/research/CAPreport-CAP01.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>As far as the private schools, I doubt that the 10% rule has much impact on them. For example, one could check the matriculation of St Mark's School in Dallas. Link at <a href="http://www.smtexas.org/campus/counseling/matriculation.asp%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.smtexas.org/campus/counseling/matriculation.asp&lt;/a>.
It is quite obvious that the direct admission at UT does not mean that much to the top 10% of the school. It is also noteworthy that the students of St Mark's attending UT tend to be accepted at programs that are not subject to direct admission (Plan II, Business and Business Honors, Engineering, Communication, among others). The absence of ranking is not an issue: UT can use the detailed profile to reconstruct the rank of the 80-90 students. The big issue is that, despite admitting a large number of students, has to accept that the majority elects not to enroll. I am not sure where you'll find the victims here! </p>

<p>Numbers show enrolled/admitted</p>

<p>Harvard University - 5/5
Yale University - 6/7*
Princeton University - 1/1
Dartmouth College - 3/3
Brown University - 1/1
Columbia - 0/1
Cornell University - 1/3
University of Pennsylvania - 3/4
Stanford University - 1/3
MIT - 1/3
Duke University - 2/4
Washington University in St. Louis - 1/10
University of Texas-Austin - 4/20
Southern Methodist Univ - 1/7
Texas A&M 0/3<br>
* One student rejected Yale to attend UNC as a Morehead Scholar </p>

<p>Again, the examples are only that. It is impossible to draw general conclusions from one school only. On the other hand, you won't have to look very far to find someone who would love to tell you how private school kids are victimized by the top 10% rule. You only need to travel to Love Field -the local city airport- and board a Southwest plane with a U
T Tee-shirt. :)</p>

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<p>The privates, to my knowledge, aren't eligible for the 10% rule. What you will see is Plano, SL Carrol, and Grapevine kids, just outside the top 10%, but far better qualified than the top 10% in Lone Oak or Wills Point or other rural districts, that can't get in. You also see UT claiming that they can't raise their profile under these conditions because they can't recruit the best available student. One could contend that the mission of a state school is not to recruit the best available student, but to educate the mass of qualified students that are state residents (from barely qualified to the top).</p>

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<p>bandit as I posted earlier, we all have our vested interests to protect and our favorite villain, so ... I don't think you were trying to be offensive but you need to spend some time with the top 10% of students at some smaller Texas schools before issuing any broad statements that can't be supported. You might not think those city folk ranked in the 10-20 decile would have such an easy go of it.</p>

<p>Most of the kids from our local richy 2000 kid school who transfer in don't exactly light the rural world on fire like their parents thought they would. I can think of but two in particular that have managed to grasp onto the last rung of the top ten % ladder. They had higher aspirations than that (and stated so) when they came in. Our schoolkids routinely whip larger 4 and 5 high dollar high school's representatives in academic competitions. Our top 14 (class of 140ish) kids numerically would be top 10% kids most anywhere in Texas. The cream rises to the top in all schools, and even though we may not produce as much cream, it's just as sweet. ;)</p>

<p>(And we don't have high school classes in SAT preparation , 20 AP classes,college prep counseling,and access to sophisticated equipment. But we get by just fine.)</p>

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<p>Your observation Curmudgeon supports something I've suspected - it's the kid that achieves. This seems obvious - but the way policy is approached, we're obviously not paying attention to this. We could do away with GPA as a predictor and instead start testing the parents or come up with a blood test. What happens in schools seems, to me, to be like what happens when you're riding in a train. You look out the window, take in the passing landscape, and get where you were headed all along. The view helped pass the time and it's something that you incorporate into your experience but if you'd made the journey in the night you'd still arrive at the same place. The key is being able to afford the ticket in the first place.</p>

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<p>Cur, I graduated with 40 other kids. You school is large by the standards of most Texas schools. The fact that those kids don't hit your top 10 could simply mean that their transfer grades weren't accepted for average, or that they chose to not take the easy courses, or that they weren't that strong to begin with. My point is not that small school don't produce intelligent kids. The problem is that the small schools by and large don't have weighted systems to allow these kids to distiguish themselves from the band, home ec, ag easy A's. The val and sal at my high school were always females that could type fast and took 4 years of home ec and band. We never saw them in algebra (our highest math course!), physics, chemistry, or bio II.</p>

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<p>Well, here in California the state schools enroll so many students from our public high schools that it's possible to do some reasonably rigorous analysis instead of just expressing opinions based on anecdotes and "common sense." And it's been done. The "top 12 1/2%" of graduating high schools students are supposed to be eligible to go to one of the 9 U of California campuses; the next tier gets to go to the 20-something CSUs. So that's a lot of kids. UC did a study to see which factor, between GPA, SAT1 and SAT2 scores, was the best predictor of success in college. And what they found was that both GPA and SAT2 scores are a better predictor of academic success in the first year of college than SAT1 scores. (In fact, they found the SAT1 scores added virtually nothing to the predictive ability of GPA and SAT2s when those two were combined.) Now, a problem with GPA is grade inflation, but within a given school grade inflation tends to float all boats, as it were. So, given that data, it makes sense to base college admissions on rank, on the theory that class rank would be a better predictor of academic success in college than SAT's or some other standard which basicaly ranks kids by how "sharp" they are.</p>

<p>And I say that, Curmudgeon, as the father of kids whose test scores skew a lot higher than their grades, in a school which grades harder as a whole than most in the state. :)</p>

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<p>kluge, your argument is a non sequitur. How does grade inflation in one school allow for fair comparison between all schools in CA?
"Now, a problem with GPA is grade inflation, but within a given school grade inflation tends to float all boats, as it were."
The "within a given school" is the crux of your argument. I agree, that class rank may be perfectly admissible, and probably the best factor for determining admission, IF and only if, you are looking at one HS. And even then, it is liable to manipulation as others have said, by taking easier classes, though this can be remedied. Otherwise, it is a skewed measure.</p>

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<p>Oversimplifying: If school A has grade inflation, and school B doesn't, a given student at school A doing a set quality of work will get a higher grade than a student doing the same quality of work at school B. Thus, all students at school A have higher GPAs than similar students at school B, even if they are doing the same quality of work, making GPA an arguably misleading citerion. Still, UC has found GPA to be a valid predictor of college academic success. </p>

<p>Taking our hypothetical a step further, if the overall level of scholarship at both schools is similar, a student ranked higher at school B than another student at school A is ranked is actually performing better, despite having a lower GPA. Rank as opposed to GPA is simply a crude way of equalizing schools with different degrees of grade inflation, in that respect.</p>

<p>Manipulation, which I suspect is a smaller issue than some seem to believe, can affect both GPA and rank; but the UC admissions people do take strength of schedule into account by a variety of means.</p>

<p>The crux of the UC study is that actual performance in high school, rather than a students innate "sharpness" is the best predictor of success in college.</p>

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<p>Do you not realize the glaring flaw in your argument, and the whole thrust of the posts here in this thread by all the posters?</p>

<p>"if the overall level of scholarship at both schools is similar"
IF IF IF IF. Everyone acknowledged that class rank unfairly maligns one's profile if he went to a more competitive school than average( or even a school more competitive than the least competitive school, because after all you may compete for a spot with that kid from the least competitive school). </p>

<p>Obviously, if you could guarantee uniform "level of scholarship" across every single HS, rank would be a powerful measure. But sadly, the state of affairs is highly variable in the level of scholarship. The whole point is that schools have students of varying ability, making the scholarship required to recieve a top 10% status vary among schools.</p>

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<p>Kluge, can you provide a reference of link for the UC study you mentioned?</p>

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<p>ashernm,
With regard to your last post (#95), do you not think that one of these could be true? (1) someone on the admissions committee may have an idea of the difficulty/challenge of certain h.s.'s versus others -- particularly challenging h.s.'s tending to be very well-known? or (2) the h.s. may have the smarts to reflect such a level in the School Profile sent to the colleges, or (3) the GC may be able to articulate that in his or her own rec sent with each student's app?</p>

<p>For my D's h.s., all (3) above are true. Further, your very example happened to my D this yr: not only does the h.s. itself accept mainly high-achieving students, my D's own class was the most accomplished that this school has seen in decades. Nevertheless, the teachers & admin. turned that "liability" into an asset by reflecting that fact on the recs, etc. The rank relative to the accomplishment of the peers was what was stressed.</p>

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<p>FrenchBaroque, It is great that your hs really highlighted your school and your D's class. I wonder if adcoms really evaluate that. When a range of gpa is reported it just does not also indicated a % of those from a more competitive hs. That range is from all hs, so to get that gpa range up there is no distinction made between top 10% at xyz hs from abc hs, as taxguy stated in his original comments (which is why he is annoyed- his D is potentially losing out on qualifying for an honors program freshman year at UC). Highlighting a class or school does not seem to change that.</p>

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<p>true, NE Mom, with regard to numerical cutoffs for things like honors programs & certain categories of recognition. And that's true that is a shame, about which I sympathize. But college acceptances per se are not necessarily adversely affected. Will PM you about that.</p>

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<p>The outline of the study is found at:
<a href="http://www.ucop.edu/news/sat/research.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.ucop.edu/news/sat/research.html&lt;/a>
Ashernm, what you're not recognizing is that the UC study I refer to used overall GPA without correcting for different levels of academic rigor at different schools. In other words, a 4.0 student at Lowfunk H.S. was considered the same as a 4.0 student at Snooty Prep. And the results were still predictive. Which suggests that doing well in high school - whatever that school is - is a valid predictor of success in college, more so than SAT scores which (arguably) are an unbiased measurement of raw academic talent.</p>

<p>All I'm suggesting is that class rank is less misleading than GPA, since grade inflation at a school can misrepresent how well each of its students did vis a vis those at another school. I just think rank is less subject to that type of error than GPA. I think your criticism of rank would be equally as strong when applied to GPA - yet UC has found GPA to be a better predictor of college success than SATs anyway.</p>

<p>I'd like you to be right, and have your opinion followed - my kids would benefit. But I have to give credit to people who have actually tried to study the question objectively, as UC appears to have done. And I'm inclined to agree with UC. My son who will be applying to college this fall tests in the 98 - 99th percentile on SATs. But his weighted GPA is below 4 (at a tough grading school), and his class rank is probably only 90th - 95th percentile. So in applying to UC he will be at a disadvantage compared to a kid who's ranked in the top 1 or 2% at a less competitive school. But I think that's valid. The kid who ranks in the top 1% at a crummy school may not have taken Calculus or AP History - may not even have had the opportunity to do so. But that kid probably worked his or her fanny off in the classes that were available, to do better than all the other kids. And maybe the willingness to work your fanny off is the key to success in college, not how many algorithms you learned in high school.</p>