Class Ranking and Luck

<p>Do you guys feel that class ranking is more than often based on luck than actual hard work/natural intelligence? At my school there’s this really one hard lit teacher that deflates grades so hard and two other lit teachers that are actually normal. Guess what, I got that psychopath of a teacher and everyone else who is competitive for the val spot got one of the two easier teachers. Not that I was going to be val anyway due to other circumstances freshman year, but that’s a different story, but I’ll probably be booted out of the top 10 because of this, because no matter if I’m the top student in this guy’s class history, I’ll still have a lower grade than everyone else.</p>

<p>Yes, sometimes. At our HS the top fifteen kids are very smart, but number one can be the luckiest and the most savvy at playing the weighted class game.</p>

<p>Yes. This drives me insane, just because I somehow happen to get the hardest, strictest teacher. Honestly, I believe it is good to have hard teachers - they push you to do your best but it really sucks that they normally bring your mark down.</p>

<p>During rankings junior year, the difference between a girl I knew and me were 5 decimal places of digits. We were around 10 ranks apart. Those partial credit answers and luck that built up over our HS careers finally caught up to us to those ranking.</p>

<p>I got the hell of a Lang comp teacher and that sent me from #3 to out of the top 30 (10%). </p>

<p>This is why schools shouldn’t rank</p>

<p>Many schools have terrible WGPA rank policies, including mine…
WGPA isn’t even that relevant anymore.</p>

<p>Class rank is really stupid and there are so many factors that affect it that make it very inaccurate. For example, one valedictorian at my school was a kid who took a ton of AP classes but was involved in nothing. All he did was study. There was another girl and she took probably the same number of APs, was a talented musician (member of All-Sate honor ensembles, a highly prestigious youth symphony), in a ton of honor societies, participated in many science related activities and held numerous leadership positions. She was very intelligent but obviously couldn’t devote as much time to studying. (She still got excellent grades and ranked in the top 10.) And in the end this girl got into Harvard and the valedictorian didn’t get into his top choice schools.
The point I’m trying to make is class rank is stupid and isn’t very accurate. It shows how people rank in the big picture (top 25%, etc.) but when it gets down to the top 10 people and they’re .00005 GPA points apart, it’s useless.
I know it’s a goal for some people to be valedictorian, but it’s a flawed and messed up system. So don’t put in all your effort and be disappointed if you don’t get. A number doesn’t and shouldn’t represent who is the smartest, most talented and best person in your school.
I hope you enjoyed my rant/ramble. </p>

<p>

Class rank deals with your academic performance relative to other people in your class. It’s not intended to measure anyone’s intelligence, awesomeness level, or propensity to get into top colleges. </p>

<p>I agreed with this thread until it shifted to becoming an overall critique on a numerical judge of character. Like @halcyonheather‌ has said, it’s an academic statistic and should be treated as such. The highest GPA is not necessarily the one with the most life struggles, the most interesting story, the most musical achievement, or the best chance of getting into college. It’s just an indicator of relative rank, and generally, isn’t taken in absolute (i.e. the top 5 is good enough and essentially the same for any top college, especially in large public schools). </p>

<p>Grades in generally are party determined by luck in terms of the teachers’ difficulty. </p>

<p>Thank god my school doesn’t do class rank…</p>

<p>My school doesn’t come down to really small decimals on the weighted scale! Most people are maye a few hundredths of a point behind the next, but that’s as small as it gets. We use a 5.0 scale. So every individual grade number gives you .125 points less of a GPA. For example a 100 in an honors class is a 5.375. A 99 is a 5.25 an so on…
A 100 for a cp class is a 4.875.
A 100 for a honors class is 5.375.
A 100 for an AP class is a 5.875</p>

<p>I don’t know if this is how everyone does it, but it works at my school. The only in accuracy is we have 1 or 2 students in the top ten that got there by cheating their way through high school. But other than that, it’s pretty accurate. It compares to out SAT/ACT scores pretty well too. </p>

<p>@halcyonheather: yeah, I realize that. And that’s why I’m saying that there a lot of factors that affect it and makes its intended purpose useless. </p>

<p>My class rank fluctuates ridiculously. I can go from 15 to 5 in one semester just because a few people got lazy. I probably dropped due to a B, but I will most likely always be in the top 10% due to my overcrowded school being one where a small percentage of students are really dedicated to schooling and the rest is into other things totally unrelated to education. Oh, and there are 600 people in my sophomore class.</p>

<p>I can really understand TotallyTrudy’s and OP[yakisoba]s post. In my school, there is this one hella strict English teacher who taught 10th/11th/AP English. My friend had her, and out of his entire class, only two people got an A, and just barely. </p>

<p>But, I mean, I guess it is kind of luck, but Class Rank also has hard work implemented into it; If you are really destined for number 1, you are willing to do your best in a ■■■■■■ teacher’s class, right?</p>

<p>Class Rank isn’t everything though, just like TotallyTrudy said; to be honest, It is just a way for colleges to see how competitive you are and how well you perform in comparison to others. It reminds me of SAT’s. To me, they seem kind of like a… scam, similar to class rank. Like, I feel that those who have access to tutoring services [richer families] will do better, and colleges can use those with better SAT’s to boost their national rankings. </p>

<p>Do colleges really pay that much attention? It seems to me they just want you in the top 10-15 percent of your graduating class. I think they know how skewed the valedictorian and salutatorian, etc. can be. For instance this year my S, who graduated 9/350 was asked to come down and sign a form the week before graduation, along with the top 10 students, attesting to the fact he did not have any other classes such as dual credit/AP the school was unaware of. Apparently last year they gave the top two awards out and then discovered (3 weeks after graduation) that the wrong student was awarded Salutatorian. I thought the whole thing ridiculous. After all, isn’t it the school’s responsibility to keep track of your transcript? Anyways, at the University of Kentucky, where my son is going, a high school Valedictorian can get a $500.00 one time scholarship. That’s it. Nothing for Salutatorian.</p>