How is Class Rank determined at your child's school?

[ssmom62]

I was wondering how class rank is determined at your child's school. My son told me today that they only include classes required for graduation in the calculation of weighted average for rank. Since you only need 3 credits of math and science, they only include the 1st three classes you took. (This means 8th, 9th and 10th grade for many students.) I was wondering if this is a standard way of doing this. It certainly seems ridiculous to me. (I will call the school tomorrow to see if this is accurate, but wondered if this is a standard procedure.) He signed up for 6 AP classes next year, but perhaps only Eng, SS, health and gym will count. This doesn't make sense to me.
By the way, it's not like my son is going to be #1 or 2, but he has worked hard and seems like he should get some compensation for the challenging courses. The do weight the courses, but it won't matter if they aren't included in the average.

[mom2010grad]

My son's school has an unweighted and a weighted class rank. All classes taken are included in the GPA calculation to determine the rank. Each advanced/AP class gets an additional .02 added to the overall GPA. So while a student may be 10th in unweighted rank, they would likely be higher than 10th if they took a heavy load of advanced / AP classes. A student can choose if they want to have the weighted rank included on their transcript ~ the unweighted rank is automatically included.

[sherpa]

My kids' school ranks similarly to mom2010grad's. Both an unweighted and a weighted rank appear on the transcript, and the weighted GPA is simply the UW GPA plus a bump of .125 times number of quarters of AP classes. I think that is a great methodology, because it doesn't punish kids for taking electives.

[mdoc]

My daughters' high school doesn't rank (school board policy), so I can't help you there. However, not including more than the classes required for graduation doesn't make a lot of sense to me. It certainly wouldn't give a realistic picture of the real rankings. Not to mention that I'd think that junior and senior year grades are more relevant than freshman year grades, so to take only the first courses into account makes even less sense. I hope your son just misunderstood, because it would be a shame for him to work hard senior year and then have it not count.

[mathmom]

We are told both unweighted and weighted averages, but class rank is based on weighted averages. Both AP and honors classes are weighted the same. The system is weird - 1.0 for slow classes, 1.05 for regular college prep (aka Regents classes) and 1.1 for AP and honors. Since GPA are all based on a 0-100 scale there has never been a tie, though sometimes the difference between ranks is 1/100th of a point. Mathson's year the val had 106 point something -highest ever in the history of the school. They only count academic classes, though I've never been 100% clear on which courses count as academic. Gym definitely doesn't count, but I think both the orchestra classes my son takes do - or maybe only one of them. I don't really care though it's to S2's advantage if they do.

More of an issue is that they determine val (so they can report it to colleges) after first quarter senior year - which seems early to me.

[ucsd_ucla_dad]

I've never heard of a class ranking that only includes classes needed for graduation - especially since that's usually such a low threshold of classes. The method you described that they use really makes no sense at all to me and I don't understand their point behind it (pun intended).

My Ds' HS had two GPAs - an overall GPA and an academic GPA. The academic one excluded PE and a few other non-academic classes. The GPAs were weighted - i.e. the AP and some honors classes were on the 5 point scale. In the end the academic GPA was very close to what the UCs would have calculated for the GPA.

For graduation they had a 'valedictory Circle' of about the top 10 or 12 students (out of 400-500) by rank. They did the circle because the difference in points between number 1 and number 2 for example, was measured in the hundredths of a point.

[PackMom]

All grades (fr. every course taken) are used in class ranking at our school.

[starbright]

Our child's HS neither ranks nor provides calculated GPA. They just send the transcript.

[Erin's Dad]

All classes, freshman through senior, unweighted with the traditional A = 4, B =3, etc.

[gadad]

All classes, unweighted, on a 0-100 scale, but here's the kicker. Since our rural HS doesn't offer a broad curriculum, the more motivated kids often take joint enrollment courses at the local university which gives letter grades. A 3-credit university course only meets for three hours a week rather than five, so it only counts as 0.6 high school courses. And since the university gives letter grades, an A is converted to a 95, a B to an 85, etc. So a HS student with a GPA above 95 registers for a university course in a more challenging subject, taught at a more rigorous level, earns an A, gets penalized for taking a lighter load, AND gets a "perfect" score of 95, which brings down his or her average. It's like the opposite of a weighted GPA!

[Peachy267]

From our school district website:

Rank–In-Class and Class Rank Computation
For the purpose of computation of rank, courses are assigned a weight according to their level of academic difficulty. Course weights are assigned as follows:

Advanced Placement and College Level Weight of 1.15
(effective with courses taken in the 2007/08 school year)
Honors Weight of 1.05
(including those completed in eighth grade beginning with the class of 2006)
All other courses Weight of 1.0



Courses applicable to class rank are those that are within the five major academic areas (English, social studies, math, science, and foreign language.) Effective with the 2007-2008 school year, all additional college level, honors and advanced placement courses in any discipline are also counted.


Prior to 2007-2008, Honors and AP/college level classes were assigned the same weight. After several years of complaining by parents/students, this was changed. 3 years ago, the salutatorian was ranked above students who had taken 8-10 AP classes; the highest level classes she had taken were Honors. These classes weren't nearly as challenging as the AP/college level classes, and therefore she received higher grades than the kids taking AP. Since the weight was identical till last year, she ended up with a higher GPA and was named salutatorian. I think that was the straw that broke the camel's back as there was a flood of complaints from parents and students alike. Last year the policy was changed to what you see above.

[ucsd_ucla_dad]

ssmom62:

I suggest you go ahead and call the counselor at the HS and ask him/her exactly how they calculate overall and academic GPA, if they count all classes taken from 9-12, if they weight some honors and all AP classes, and how they rank. Again, the method described in you post seems to be unusual and really doesn't make any sense so I'd guess that there might have been a communication problem on this one and they really do it differently. If it ends up that they do rank and calculate GPA as described, tell them that it's a very unusual system and ask them the philosophy behind it.

[hudsonvalley51]

Our school uses weighted averages and the 100 point scale to determine class rank. 5 extra points are given for Honors/AP and SUNY college credit courses. 3 extra points are given for Regents level courses (for average students) and 0 extra points are given for "Regents Skills" courses (for below average and SPED students). Therefore a 90 in a "Regents Skills" class becomes a 93 in a "Regents" class and a 95 in an Honors or AP class.

Does this result in some very bright students taking lower level classes where they can earn a 98 in order to avoid an AP course where they might have to settle for a 92? You betcha!

[pugmadkate]

This has been explained to me twice and what I retained can be summed up as, "This is too complicated." Although what mathmom says sounds vaguely familiar, including the weighted/unweighted information being given out.

[Cornelli2008]

In my high school, we received a full point added to our cumulative GPA (out of 100 points) for every AP class that we took in which we received an overall grade of 90 or above, .75 points for 80-90, and .5 points for below an 80 or something like that. So if you took 5 AP classes in which you got above a 90, and had a GPA of a 95, you ended up with a weighted GPA of a 100. I'm not really sure if it makes sense to do it that way. The only thing that made me angry about it was that I was beat out by the valedictorian by less than one point because I chose to take Italian in 7th grade, and she took Spanish and there was no AP Italian class offered senior year, while there was an AP Spanish class. O well.