<p>Blueberry: In our situation it is hard to know what will help the student. I think all students need to have as many factors working for them as possible; but perhaps the need is even greater for students from a HS without a track record. Rank is more tangible than GPA. (At our school this student would be ranked even if we went to a no ranking system because the law requries the top 10% to be ranked.) Understand though that just because few students have chosen to apply to and go to most competitive colleges our HS rountinely has a few students who are at that level. It is clear that there are many benefits to not ranking, I started this thread because I was trying to figure out if there are significant benefits for our district. So far it seems that we differ from most of the schools discussed and I think we would be loosing more than we are gaining if we stopped ranking (students below the top 10%).</p>