Can high schools report class rank while reducing rank-grubbing?

Parents Forum
1

In places where class rank is important (e.g. Texas and other places where class rank is heavily weighed for admission and scholarships), can high schools report class rank the following way to reduce rank grubbing?

(A) For class of Y finishing 11th grade, record GPAs for each percentile threshold (top 1% / 99th percentile, top 2% / 98th percentile, …).
(B) For class of Y+1 finishing 11th grade (a year after class of Y), give each student a percentile rank based on the threshold calculated in (A) above.

I.e. students in the class of Y+1 do not have to engage in rank-grubbing or cutthroat competition against each other, but are only trying to meet the GPA thresholds set by the previous class of Y. Yes, there could be grade-grubbing, but grade-grubbing happens no matter what.

Not sure how to handle scholarships where valedictorian status is required for eligibility or heavily weighted. Perhaps the following:

© After the class of Y+1 percentile ranks have been determined, a class of Y+1 student applying for a scholarship which requires or heavily weights valedictorian status may ask his/her counselor whether s/he has valedictorian status. Valedictorian status is not announced or used by the school otherwise.

2

^^^Math is hard ~X(

3

The issue with Texas, is the rankings is a method to be fair across all high schools. So, in effect, it allows you to compare each school and set the number of qualified candidate at the same 10% (or whatever it’s set for this year). It only works based on the agreed % being used across all high schools.

You could limit rankings to the top 10%…or perhaps only share rankings with the State of Texas public universities. Otherwise it’s not included on transcripts…

4

This may solve the problem of rank grubbing for Val and Sal status among the top 1%, but it doesn’t solve the problem near the cut-off percentiles.

The stakes are not as high in SC as in Texas, yet there was considerable rank grubbing/jockeying in my kids’ HS to make the top 6% - the cutoff for the Palmetto Fellows scholarship.

In our area, it’s well known that entry level community college classes are easier than the HS AP classes. Both carry the same weight so lots of kids take CC classes to raise their rank. And electives are often chosen by students based on their impact on rank.