<p>Niquii, the problem is that many districts are taking advantage of a system that requires state universities to use class rank. They are taking advantage of the fact that middle schools in poor neighborhoods do not and cannot afford to offer honor level high school courses. These schools spend most of their resources offering remedial and regular middle school courses. The most advanced courses offered are usually academic level high school courses. To protect a HS GPA from getting dinged, these courses are usually offered on a pass / fail basis. </p>
<p>An unscrupulous district that wants to discourage such students from coming in can take advantage of this situation and treat a top graduate from such a mid school in the same way as a local student who who had a choice of taking honor level courses and who knew and whose teachers knew that the grade would end up on the HS Transcript, but decided to take academic level courses. This way the district creates a false equivalency between a top student at one district and someone who is a B student or lower at another.</p>