<p>Well, I don’t think the OP had a problem with dropping ranking from admission. I think the issue was that they were stamping “top 10%” on his/her kid’s application when in fact they were a lot higher than that. This problem would be easily solved by the school noting that they do not classify their students in finer increments than 10%.</p>
<p>Colleges do need to get a sense for what the grade inflation/deflation is like. I think the best way would be to calculate GPA (unweighted and weighted) and then list on the application what the cut-offs were for top 10%, 20%, 30%, etc… That way the students aren’t fighting with each other to get into the 1% designation or dropping their PE or art class because it isn’t weighted. Also, it’s fairer in that the guy who was in the top 9% doesn’t get an enormous advantage over the guy who was only in the top 11%. It’s more of a continuous scale.</p>