Schools Abandoning Class Ranking

Parents Forum
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<p>I don’t support ranking OR weighting, for reasons others on this thread have mentioned. If the GPA difference between #1 and #20 is mere hundredths of a point, I can’t take seriously the notion that #20 has been “outranked” by 19 other people. I strongly dislike the notion that students/parents might artifically increase a GPA through clever scheduling, either by piling on APs/honors in schools that weight grades, or by avoiding them in schools that don’t. Even kids with identical schedules don’t necessarily compete on an even field, since different teachers have varying expectations and grading policies. </p>

<p>In my mind, ranking can’t be done fairly, so why do it? Unless it’s to give colleges one more supposedly “objective” benchmark by which to compare kids (except it’s not really objective). Much as I like William Shain, I disagree that having rank info leads to better admissions decisions - in many cases, anyway. </p>

<p>Our hs neither ranks nor weights, and hasn’t for perhaps 20 years. It’s a strong suburban school in a sort-of affluent area (of a pretty financially depressed region). It’s no TJ or Stuyvesant (average SATs last year were 1160), but it does exceptionally well at getting kids admitted to top schools. In last year’s class of 375-ish, 12 kids enrolled at top 10 USNews unis/LACs (including 3 at Williams, 3 at Brown,and 2 at MIT, which impressed the heck out of me). Another 23 kids enrolled at top 20 schools. That’s 35 kids at very-big-name schools. Would #23 or #31 have been admitted if their apps made clear that 22 or, my gosh, 30 other students “outranked” them? I don’t think so.</p>

<p>When this conversation came up a couple of years ago, jamimom (wow, I miss her) made the point that students from weaker, less-known high schools benefit in college admissions by having a high class rank. That’s something to consider, but it’s the only compelling factor I can see in favor of ranking/weighting.</p>

<p>Our hs announces the kid with the highest GPA 3 weeks before graduation, long after admissions decisions have been made. This student does give a graduation speech, though they’re designated the “Senior Scholar,” not the val. No 44 vals for us - the school figures GPA to the thousandth point, and we’ve only had a tie once. My heart doesn’t bleed for these kids (and my d was one of 'em) - they wind up with some pretty nice options, and the rest of the community gets to be a little less crazy about the admissions game.</p>

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<p>Our HS ranks, uses weighted gpa in the ranking and because it used %age grades vs A, B, C and E grades has never had more than one val or salutorian. And its grading is tough. Though 5% and 10% are added to honors and AP courses respectively, no student has graduated with a 99%+ gpa.</p>

<p>And yes, our students do just fine in the admissions process.</p>

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<p>Our school district is similar to Originaloog. AP courses are weighted, grades are given in percentage, students are ranked, and the val and sal are announced a few days before graduation. Ranking is important information for colleges to have! Colleges can look at ranking in context of the student body to see what the student is “competing” against. Without ranking, what are you left with for colleges to use in admissions? A GC rec? (My kids attend big public h.s. H.S. junior son has a brand-new G.C. She doesn’t know him from Adam. ) S.A.T. scores? (And some colleges don’t require SAT IIs, so just SAT 1s? Courseload? (What exactly does AP English mean at School X?) I’m sorry that some schools do not use weighted GPA, and % grades… maybe they should, but getting rid of ranking is not the answer. That forces colleges to rely on too few bits of information. If you go to a well-known private school, well, the Adcom knows your school and reputation… but for the majority of students at public h.s. … nah</p>

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<p>My kids’ school does not rank, though we do have a valedictorian and salutatorian. The kids don’t find out who is val/sal until the day before graduation. One day to get the speech together! D and S1 were both Vals; D had no idea up till the last day, and S1 was pretty sure about being that or Sal. I asked the GC whether or not the relative ranking was discussed in the counselor-letter to colleges, especially where rank was specifically required. She implied that she can tell the colleges where the student will likely end up, and in S1’s case, actually did say he was #1 when that was required.</p>

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<p>Our school does not rank or weight grades. Without weighting, it is extremely difficult to rank. We have 3 or sometimes 4 levels of difficulty of a class. It’s not just AP. Maybe the small LACs would take the time to figure out that the top ranked students are in easier courses, but the larger universities would likely not.
Frankly, I’d rather go back to weighting. Then rank could mean something.</p>

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<p>I think the perspective changes according to who the “target audience” is. My kids school is one of the largest public schools in Indiana as well as considered one of the strongest academically and does rank but does not weight. The vast majority of the students are aiming for IU, Purdue and Ball State. IU accepts applicants from the top 50% of the class. Some of our students were not getting into IU because they weren’t top 50%; the 50% mark for GPA’s is around 3.1. This is a generalization but the simple fact is that a student at our high school earning a 2.8 is most likely a stronger, more well-prepared student than someone from some of the other schools around the state where a 2.8 squarely put them in the top 50%. Our student got rejected and the other was accepted. So a few years ago, our high school stopped sending the class rank to IU, an example of how a HS adjusted to the target aimed at by a majority of students.</p>

<p>I just heard last week that our high school will be switching next year to no rank and weighted grades. Despite the size of our HS and the availability of a high number of AP classes, our kids weren’t taking those classes because they hurt the GPA. There has been a BIG campaign to get kids to take AP’s and the numbers are drastically increasing. I think the decision to weight grades is the school’s “reward” to those students for taking AP’s. </p>

<p>I know it will help my son. His GPA will probably jump from ~3.1 to ~3.4. He’s one of those kids that will need every advantage he can get so I’m hoping that he’ll be grandfathered in and get a weighted GPA. He takes a strong courseload (he keeps picking things like AP Chem as electives!) but then struggled with the higher level classes. I would love to see him gain some benefit from having chosen that path.</p>

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<p>‘‘Well, maybe not at mathmom’s school where 20% are in the top 10% . No offense intended, mathmom, but I don’t quite get that.’’</p>

<p>It’s pretty simple math. Imagine a class of 100 where 20 people have a perfect GPA.</p>

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<p>“It’s pretty simple math. Imagine a class of 100 where 20 people have a perfect GPA.”</p>

<p>Yes, but it is also IMPERFECT math resulting from an imprecise GPA calculation. This could not happen at schools that use a 0-100 scale. </p>

<p>Trying to fit 20 students in the top 10% of a class of 100 is exactly what IS wrong with a system. The purpose of such charade IS to GAME the system by muddying the waters. </p>

<p>However, the main isssue is not about ranking versus non-ranking. The REAL issue is that high schools SHOULD provide a complete and accurate representation of their graduating class in the context of their school. The examples of private schools that do not rank, but offer a grade distribution for EVERY subject taken is telling. On the other hand, believing that colleges simply set aside the importance of “ranking” students should check a few statistics such as the one posted by Rice University. No matter how much we may try to dismiss the importance of ranking, it remains a very important element of admissions, which is alas undermined by the highly questionable practices at a growing number of high schools.</p>

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<p>My d’s school doesn’t rank, and hasn’t ranked for a very long time (I’m not even sure they ever ranked). It’s a competitive, suburban public high school that does very well in college placement. I don’t think they even keep a ranking, so they can’t give it out on request/demand unless they calculate it anew.</p>

<p>The school does use weighted GPA’s for some purposes, but not for others. For example, High Honors and Honors are based on an unweighted GPA. So my D, who has always taken the hardest courses and usually had one B+, ends up with Honors, while a kid taking all remedial courses and getting A’s ends up with High Honors. Colleges, however, seem to see through that.</p>

<p>For eligibility to National Honor Society, and for percentiles of class, however, the school uses weighted GPA’s, so the APs and Honors classes won’t hurt the kids.</p>

<p>The frustrating part, though, is that until the end of the junior year, the school doesn’t even tell the kids their GPA! Any stats I’ve posted have been based on my own calculations of her GPA.</p>

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<p>Our small PHS has an excellent track record (imo). Last year, 12/135 admitted to HYPSM/Ivy/AWS. Another two dozen to next level extremely competitive schools (eg, Middlebury, Bowdoin, Duke…).</p>

<p>It does not designate val/sal (1 each, how retro) until very near to graduation; so no effect on college admissions.</p>

<p>It grades and reports on 100 point scale, with A=93+. Very tough. It does weight, with highest weights being in the ~122 range. It reports deciles for unweighted grades.</p>

<p>The ranking is tough - even just in deciles -when a school/class is very strong. Just as originaloog mentions, in our school the difference between top 10% and not can be the difference between 93.85 and 93.41. So - when all the colleges are asking you to check whether you were in the “top 10%” or “top 25%,” these kids who are only a nano-millimeter away from top 10% get lumped - if they get lumped - way lower down than they belong.</p>

<p>The school has a great track record and I am not going to question their system. I also believe it is an honorable one. But when our kids are compared with mathmom’s kids, we are at a disadvantage. At our school only 10% are in the top 10%. So while the school’s admissions results are successful, I’m not sure how much greater the success would have been of students in the 11-15% if our decile ranking either wasn’t reported or our school played the “20% in the top 10%” or the bottom student is in the “top 50%” game.</p>

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<p>The trouble I have always had with rankings is that student A may have focused more on math and science where student B focused more on English and humanities. How can these students be compared on the same scale? Further, there is a variability in how teachers grade so there is inevitably an effort to game the system.</p>

<p>Unfortunately this leads to an increased use of SATs and ACTs. If you look at the Academic Index used by the Ivy League to recruit athletes you will see that those tests have a greater weighting than class rank. At a recent info session I attended the director of admissions said that SATs were more important than class rank because it enables them to compare students nationally. Further, they needed to go in this direction because fewer and fewer schools provided class rank as part of their report to the school.</p>

<p>I guess this is the direction everything is going.</p>

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<p>my s’s school never had official class ranking</p>

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<p>I believe in honorable, tough systems. Kids will do fine in the long run and they get the right message. In my school’s graduating classes only 2 are in the top 10%! Half are doing full IB. Most kids don’t apply to the states. Most go to the UK. They get good results where ever they apply and they use good judgement about where they should apply.</p>

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<p>Reading about Jmmom and Momofthree’s schools, I would add that ours is similar, but not nearly as academically competitive as Jmmom’s. Also, and I think this is very important, the big state unis in our state do NOT use class rank in determining admission - there is generally an ACT or SAT score cutoff and a GPA cutoff, and that is it. Some of them have slightly different requirements for OOS vs in-state, and they all have curriculum requirements. The majority of students go to one of 5 in-state or neighboring state unis, so the non-ranking is most important for the kids in the top 25% of the class, who are helped the most by it (GPAs are very close).</p>

<p>Also, the CC is very savvy with letter writing, and openly says she always tries hard to display the student in the best light - she’s very conscious of all those buzzwords we talk about here.</p>

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<p>We’re in Texas. Top 10% and you are an automatic admit to the Texas Public U of your choice. We hear about kids transferring to a less rigorous school for the last two years of H.S. to be in the top ten percent - but I think it is mostly urban legend, not reality. I still think that getting rid of ranking ends up putting too much emphasis on S.A.T. scores - so I’m pro weighted grades, numerical percentages as opposed to A,B,C’s, and ranking. Colleges can always look at this info in the context of the school population from which it comes.</p>

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<p>My kids’ Catholic school does not rank either for the same reason that weenie’s kid’s Jesuit (Catholic) school doesn’t. Why should these kids be penalized when they go to a prep high school (which required the passage of an entrance exam in order to be admitted) be penalized. Certainly, the kids in the top 50% at our school would all be top 10% at public schools. BTW All classes here are honors or AP.</p>

<p>Weenie… are you in Virginia? My cousin’s kids go to a Jesuit high school in Virginia.</p>

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<p>“Yes, but it is also IMPERFECT math resulting from an imprecise GPA calculation. This could not happen at schools that use a 0-100 scale.”</p>

<p>No, it can happen at any school where more than 10% of the kids get grades equal to the top 10%. It’s less likely to happen on a 0-100 scale which is what my kids have, BTW, I was talking about my small prep school many years ago when I said that more than 10% of us were in the top 10% of the class. That school refused to rank kids then and as far as I know still refuses to rank kids. We voted for a class valedictorian.</p>

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<p>Eagle, I agree. Some kids take harder math and science classes for 4 years and have a bit lower GPA’s then kids who take “general science” or “general math” or other easier classes. </p>

<p>Ranking is meaningless. Instead, the colleges should just use GPA’s, the class types, and SAT scores. The SAT scores (high or low) indicate whether a student’s school practices grade inflation.</p>

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<p>I’m not saying that math or science are harder than the humanities, just different and thus hard to compare. Because it is hard to compare I do not understand why the school should put the students on the same scale. Or more accurately why the colleges would want that.</p>

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<p>Like anxiousmom, we are located in Texas as well…Houston suburb to be exact. The problem with our public high school is that we have a gazillion levels: AP, AP-Dual Credit, Gifted AP, Gifted AP-Dual, Honors, Pre-AP and this weird hybrid that is supposed to be accelerated, but is in actuality nothing more than ‘on-level’. ALL of these levels are ‘weighted’; however they are weighted exactly the same, with one extra point. So it doesn’t take a math wizard to figure out that they have basically created an UNweighted system. And most of the students who plan to stay in Texas and attend Texas or A&M, stick with the easiest courses (the weird hybrid) to ensure they stay in the top 10%. </p>

<p>So, I really give credit to our kids who take the APs and AP-Dual Credit classes. We have outstanding AP teachers who push their students extremely hard. A’s are NOT given away in these classes…in fact, they are very rare. These kids make a conscious decision to take a hit on rank in order to graduate more prepared to handle the rigors of college.</p>

<p>Rank definitely is not a meaningful number in our district.</p>