<p>oldfort-I still don’t see it as being penalized. If a school doesn’t offer AP classes, that is taken into consideration at schools and those students still get a check for the “most rigorous” and being top 10% in a school like that is a cakewalk compared to more rigorous schools where being top 10% means a LOT. I look at the classes our kids have taken compared to the offerings in some schools around us and just laugh yet the top 10% kid from that school has opportunities the kids from our school that are in the 11% percentile do not. When college place a heavy weight on class rank (or scholarships that are for a class rank) it’s an advantage to go to a school that doesn’t have as rigorous of a curriculum. </p>
<p>Our school doesn’t weight grades because those become meaningless in college applications. They DO weight the class rank however and if you don’t take a rigorous schedule you can’t graduate in the top of the class no matter what your GPA is. I know a few kids that have never taken a hard class, honors or AP and have 4.0’s. Without that rank weighting, they would be in the top 10 of the class above kids that have 15+ AP classes. That is “fair”.</p>