<p>geogirl1 – I wish our school handled the class rank issue the way your school does. Well, perhaps not exactly – I do think it would be helpful when evaluating where to apply to have a handle on rank by October of the senior year.</p>
<p>Our high school informs students of their class rank at the end of their sophomore year. This creates both the “competitive environment” that your school wants to avoid, as well as a lot of games-playing by students and their families as they try to make class choices that will gain them an edge in ranking. We frequently have situations where a parent will request the “easy” Spanish teacher instead of the “hard” one so their child’s GPA gets a boost. Or a brilliant math student will opt for Regents trigonometry instead of honors trig because they can earn a 99 in the former while a 95 in honors only earns a weighting of 3 extra points. Or a top 5 student takes Regents US History instead of APUSH for the same reason. And this sometimes works. We’ve had several vals and sals in recent years who avoided many honors/AP classes to boost their class rank. Sometimes avoidance of the toughest curriculum backfires come college admissions time, sometimes it doesn’t. All that aside, I do think the overemphasis on ranking at our school and many of our neighboring schools creates an atmosphere that is ultimately harmful to the kids. Personally, I’d rather see our students grouped into deciles, but I could live with ranking as long as it wasn’t provided to students until their senior year.</p>
<p>Hudsonvalley51- I guess there are two sides to every story. We don’t have the issues you are describing. However, Honors are weighted 5% and APs 15%, so it behoves the students to take those classes rather than the Regents classes. I do see a little of the get “the easier Spanish” teacher, but that mostly has to do with having less work, than GPA. Since DS12 is our first, I feel a bit more anxiety going through this process than I should. In the end I know he will end up at a great school and do well. So, maybe it’s me who has to chill a bit, not him!</p>
<p>We have no weighted GPA and no class rank here, just straight unweighted GPA. S1 knew a student who graduated with 3.9+ (could even be 4.0) without ever taking any honor or AP classes in four years. The student was not accepted to any elite schools.</p>
<p>Relax parents. The students’ attitude is about right IMO. Standard tests are overrated. They are used to confirm the courses a student took and the grade she received. The tests should not be over-prepared for and it won’t help that much if they were.</p>
<p>PCP, That’s the way at my D’s school, no class rank, no weighted GPA. No val or sal for that matter. It’s great at not overheating competition. Kids get along very well and are nice to each other.</p>
<p>But, when the PSAT is the only path to some generous scholarships and merit aid, one can’t overstate its potential to greatly benefit some kids.</p>
<p>Congrats to DB’s DD! It is too bad that those folks on the college admissions committee’s will never get to really know our kids, so we have to play their game. For a lot of schools, top 10% an important distinction. Colleges love to publish how many of their freshman were in the top 10% of their h.s. class. Cheers.</p>
<p>S felt that the PSAT went fine for him. He was more concerned about the calculus test he had to take in the afternoon. Poor kid also had an AP chemistry test the day before, so all he wanted to was relax after getting home last night.</p>
<p>I’m thinking he will take the SAT in January, older D waited until May/June and it was too crazy for her at the end of the school year. </p>
<p>His HS does provide the student’s ranking from the start of high school. However I’ve never heard a parent or student talk about it. Maybe I hang around with the wrong group of parents.</p>
<p>This has been a very stressful week at our house. I won’t go into all the extraneous family issues on this thread but just know that the environment around here was not optimal for the amount of work/tests/PSAT/stress that DS had to concentrate on this week. He did two almost allnighters in a row Sunday and Monday evening trying to get his HW done and and the papers entered into turnitin.com (for AP English Lang). Tuesday, though exhausted and not prepared, he had an AP chemistry test and an AP Physics test (after which he came home and reported to me that he is quite sure that he failed both). Thank goodness, since the PSAT took 4 class periods, he had minimal HW on Tuesday night and was able to finally get some sleep before the PSAT. I will be glad when this quarter is over on October 28th and he starts with a clean slate for the second quarter!</p>
<p>Our school district has something called Pinnacle, which is an online reporting system where a student or parent can log on and access the child’s up to date current grade report (every test/quiz/hw), the child’s test history (FCAT, PSAT, AP scores…)their attendance history, their academic history and thier transcript that has their highest test scores (FCAT, SAT, ACT, PSAT), class rank, number of kids in the grade (which fluctuates daily and is currently 797), and all three GPA’s (unweighted, weighted and academic core weighted). Having Pinnacle is a very mixed bag. Yes, it can be good for a student to see if a teacher misentered or forgot to enter a test grade but also it can cause lots of competition and stress. My son’s peers regularly try to one up each other to beat each others ranks. The kids take 4 to 6 AP classes a year and some of the very competitive ones, also take another one online (and tell no one). It is sick IMHO. I try to convince my own son not to play that game, just take the classes that he is interested in and do his best but I can see the competitive wheels turning in him. There are days that I love knowing what’s going on in his academic life and others which I just wish I didn’t know. It is too stressful for me. My parent’s never road an academic roller coaster with me…they had no clue when I had a test or what I got on it, they only saw the report card at the end of the quarter. Maybe it was better that way. </p>
<p>BTW, DS just texted me that he got a B on that AP Physics test that he thought that he had failed on Tuesday…the roller coaster is still not my ride of choice.</p>
<p>Stress - D2 thought she registered for the Nov SAT test, but never hit submit. Now she is on standby. The closest test center with available seat is 6 hours away. She is told that she is first on the waitlist, so there is a good chance of taking it.</p>
<p>That is stressful Oldfort. Hopefully she will get in. I know that we postponed my son’s Oct SAT just a week before the test, thus freeing up a spot for someone to get off the waitlist. Chances are, the same will happen for your daughter (a spot will open).</p>
<p>Yay, you go, D of dougbetsy!! It’s great to hear good news!</p>
<p>Hearing the stories of competition, I’m almost glad D is dysgraphic-- she’ll never get math very well so those math/science grades will always keep her from the upper reaches of class rank. Sometimes I feel bad about it, but when I read these things I think it has a lucky aspect-- she’s released from the competition and can focus on her own aspirations.</p>
<p>@Oldfort: You can call the CB the day before the test, and they can tell you whether the test site has extra test booklets, which might be a good thing to do before making that 6 hour drive. DD was surprised at how empty her test room was, since she was standby.</p>
<p>We all try not to be helicopter parents, but when this happens, I just want to say, “Next time I´ll do it instead.” It was an honest mistake because it has happened to me before. But arrrgg.</p>
<p>So, DB, the online info shows scores and stats of all students? My D’s is private and she can only access her grades. The only time the top kids (I believe top 5%) are presented are at open house nights in fall and spring. For my D’s class, thre are only 3 remaining val candidates. D was dropped when she missed an A by .01 in an honors class. But she’s still 5th in her class of 775. I will be celebrating when this junior year is over!!!</p>
<p>Wow! 5th out of 775! That’s great. You should celebrate. :)</p>
<p>And, no we don’t get to see the scores and stats of all students, just our own kid. So for D there’s a spot on the transcript where it says 8/297 for weighted and 25/297 UW.</p>
<p>seiclan… I am totally with you on this stressful rollercoaster we are on!!! I was awake… worrying as usual, in the middle of the night and I too thought that my parents never even had an idea about how I was doing in school or in my personal life. I would have been horrified if they would of been as hyper involved as I am in my kids life. I don’t know why things have changed so much. I guess because the stakes are so much higher now. In my day only about 20% of HS kids went on to a 4 year college. Now if you don’t get a college degree you really are screwed. I feel like every test my kids take is life or death. At my kids school we don’t have any online service so never know what their grades are till report cards are sent home… this causes extreme anxiety by everyone involved. I hate those days waiting for the mailman to put them in the box. It causes me to snoop through there backpacks and binders looking for test results and then worry even more. I hate that I can’t just let them be and relax like my parents did… I just can’t seem to do it. URGH!!!</p>
<p>Oh yeah… my DS was up all last night with a stomach ache, tons of homework and tests this week because Friday is the end of the Quarter, play practice every night till 9:00 because opening night is next Thursday, and PSAT on Saturday!!! OMG, how do these kids do it???</p>
<p>I feel you 5boys! My son came home from school today, announced that he had NO homework (first time in weeks) and went to bed. He just slept for 2 1/2 hours and I made him get up because I don’t want him to not be able to sleep later…I mean he does have to get up at 6:40 am for school tomorrow! I casually suggested that if he had no hw he could use his time tonight to open up the big red ACT prep book (that has never been touched) and go over some problems for next week’s ACT. No way he would do that…he did agree that maybe he would look at some of his weekend work…maybe. Why can’t I just let him have the night off? I guess it is because I feel that he is always procrastinating then playing catch up. This gives me extreme anxiety. I cannot sleep knowing that he is upstairs “burning the midnight oil.” He likes working this way btw. </p>
<p>Oh, and this year my son finally checked the Yes, colleges can send me information box on Wednesday’s PSAT form. He hadn’t done this the past two years and we didn’t get any of the college mailings like all of my friend’s kids did. I told my son that it would be nice to see who sends him stuff. He obliged. </p>
<p>I didn’t realize that some places take the PSAT on Saturday…wow. </p>
<p>We don’t see anyone else’s scores or ranks…just our own kid too but the kids all talk about it at school. My kid’s school dosen’t give separate ranks for weighted and unweighted (and we have three GPA’s …weighted academic classes, all weighted classes and unweighted). My son is 12/797 today but…this is going to be a rough semester/year. I don’t know if he can stay there. It all depends on how everyone else is doing with all those AP’s too. I don’t really care. I just hope that he can stay in the top 5% (so I guess rank 39 or less?) because it would help him to get into better schools next year. Regardless, my mantra is healthy, happy, well adjusted, independent. There will be a college for him at any rank.</p>