<p>anxiousmom - I’ve heard the urban legend too…but I’m not so sure it isn’t true. At our school, we have had a half dozen or so families move to different attendance boundaries in order to get their little Johnny or little Judy a starting position on the football team or a place on the cheer squad, so doing the same for academics doesn’t seem far-fetched. Given our current system of weighting and ranking, I have to say I would understand the temptation. :-)</p>
<p>class rank doesn’t always show who has had the most success in the most rigorous curriculum…my public hs is extremely competitive and due to the fact that i took jazz band zero period (an extra 8th period every day at 6:30AM which the administration will not weight as honors) my class rank fell to 39/350 despite a 4.0UW…many students with lower UW GPA’s and less honors coursework were ranked above me…depending on weighting policies at my school i could have been (and should have been) 3/350 but due to weighting decisions out of my control i basically lost all hope of attending a prestigious university despite having perfect sat/satii/ap scores and straight A’s…8/350 took 4 AP tests during high school, i took 6, 5 last year alone and was ranked 39/350 (well after first semester it’s 32/350)…class rank basically made a mockery of everything i’ve achieved throughout high school</p>
<p>Xiggi pegged it a couple of pages back. Elite high schools have long refused to rank and this made many other schools think they could get away with it too. I think the article that started the thread makes it clear that it hurts many students. Let’s face it, it’s witholding information. Schools understand if your 13 at a highly competitive school that you’re a hair away from being val. But they know there are many, many schools with outrageous grade inflation producing 44 vals every year, and if they don’t know your school they may well assume it’s one.</p>
<p>An interesting side note is the school with the 44 vals has an exceptional track record of placing students into the top tier universities and LAC’s, often better than the local test-into-privates.</p>
<p>Our local 1800+ enrollment public does not rank, but provides GPA and WGPA on the school profile, as well as the yearly percentage distribution of seniors by WGPA. Last year, 4% of the 470 seniors, 19 students, had WGPAs above 4.51, and 11% had WGPAs from 4.0- 4.5. (A general picture - 67% went to 4-yr colleges, 15% to 2-yr colleges, 7% to the workforce, and 1% to the military). </p>
<p>I am against ranking, and I think that the collective parent and prospective student population should continue to pressure colleges to eliminate it from their calculations. </p>
<p>The “Best” may have some relevance if everybody takes the same classes. However, it has no meaning in a large school with a great variety of courses. For example, this school offers 26 APs and many honors and non-honors courses of interest, such as Ancient History and Philosophy and Religion. Those 19 students in the top 4% of the class had varied academic interests and emphasized very different paths. One took marching band and orchestra for four years while getting As in tough classes and AP Music Theory, one had four years of school newspaper and tons of English classes, one maxed out all of the Math/Science offerings, one took every AP History class offered. Some were primarily hit-the-books studiers, some were tireless researchers, some had sparkling original minds, some were gifted communicators. </p>
<p>These are very different individuals. It’s like trying to compare Ben Hur to Gone With the Wind - both fabulous films, both entirely unique. </p>
<p>Giving importance to ranking de-emphasizes the importance of the gestalt of the individual and his/her talents, accomplishments, and choices. It reminds me of the Zen story about the woman who entered the butcher shop. “Give me your best piece of meat” she requested. The butcher replied “There is no piece of meat in my shop that is not the best.” </p>
<p>Any attempt to rank these 19 students would not reveal the quality of one student’s mind compared to the others. Only academic interviews, written work, references, and the essay can give some picture. Harder work for the adcoms? From the perspective of a student advocate, I’m just not very sympathetic.</p>
<p>I say get rid of ranking. What is the point of SAT or ACT scores if ranking is needed? Anyone with half a brain should not care about rank. It is just too hard to compare students when their class choices can have such a variance. </p>
<p>Even within the AP system there is a problem. Some kids take harder AP classes and some take “AP Lite” courses. Some foreign languages are harder than others. </p>
<p>Adcoms should look at SAT/ACT scores, SAT II scores (if needed), classes taken and grades received, EC’s, recs, and that’s about it. I also think that the essay req’t is silly – who knows who really wrote the essays!!!</p>
<p>I think only in cases where most of the students are extremely competitive, such as in treewannabe’s case, there should not be rank, as long as there is a school profile. HOwever, in most cases, where high schools may send only a few students to ivy and equivalent, rank can only help.</p>
<p>I wonder what that school does that had over 180 NMF last year does? Certainly a large number of those kids have top GPA’s.</p>
<ol>
<li>Haven’t seen a post on ranking from the HS students’ pov:
local HS got rid of ranking > 14 years ago,
after a suicide & general feelings that rankings contributed to too intense
in-school competition.
Since then,</li>
<li>School atmosphere has been gotten better, reportedly in comparision with
times when all kids were ranked.</li>
<li><p>college admission results did not suffer.</p></li>
<li><p>“urban legend” about kids transferring to less rigorous schools to get higher ranking/better GPAs:
it’s not a myth!
2 years ago local student did so, got into MIT, was trumpeted in national news which quoted the college consultant service that had advised using this specific route.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>“I am against ranking, and I think that the collective parent and prospective student population should continue to pressure colleges to eliminate it from their calculations.”</p>
<p>I could not disagree more. </p>
<p>For starters, there is no need to pressure colleges to drop yet another objective yardstick. On the other hand, the pressure on high schools is real, and the results is the boondoggle we CURRENTLY have. The real problem is that we have vastly inconsistent grading policies and, in many cases, utterly moronic weighing policies. </p>
<p>The key in admission is to evaluate students among their true peers, and to accomplish this a ranking -or veiled ranking- is a strong indicator of the success or lack of success of a student. Again, strong private schools have abandoned simplistic ranking formulas, but DO provide detailed account of student performances. You do not need to know if a student is ranked 3d or 15th when you have thedistribution of each class he or she took in high school. Why do provate school go through such lengths? Because they DO have their hand on the pulse of the LATEST trends in admissions and intimately know WHAT is important. On the other hand, misguided parents and amateurish school officials simply THINK they know and hope to find better results in nebulous and incomplete representations of their school. While there is not a perfect way to illustrate the career of a HS student, erring on the side of LESS information should not be encouraged. </p>
<p>Again, parents and students should really put pressure on schools to obtain MORE information and seek added transparency in curriculum and grading policies. Further, they should seek to obtain a larger say in the management of the information that belongs to the STUDENTS. The school role is to educate and report the RAW grades in an uniform manner, and allow each family to select the option that fits their individual situation. </p>
<p>FWIW, the argument that the presence of a ranking would not allow students with special accomplishments to be recognized is vapid at best. Simply look at our state colleges that have admission driven by numbers -versus a holistic approach- but also have nationally competitive athletic programs.</p>
<p>“Any attempt to rank these 19 students would not reveal the quality of one student’s mind compared to the others. Only academic interviews, written work, references, and the essay can give some picture. Harder work for the adcoms? From the perspective of a student advocate, I’m just not very sympathetic.”</p>
<p>Cynics could equally point out the weaknesses of the such subjective measurements: interviews depend as much from the interviewer as from the candidate, written work does not necessarily ensure originality nor guarantees its integrity, same for the essay, and then we have references that can amount to nothing more than a popularity contest or the measurement of a family’s financial contribution to a school. </p>
<p>Better system? Hardly!</p>
<p>“The key in admission is to evaluate students among their true peers,”</p>
<p>Xiggi, I normally agree with you but in this case I don’t. Since kids can take such a wide variety of courses, a kid is no longer being “evaluated among their true peers” . Kids are often being evaluated among their non-peers who took easier classes than they did.</p>
<p>But, jlauer, I think that is the point xiggi is making. A simplistic ranking whether with 1 val or 44 vals is not what he is advocating. He is advocating, as I read it, information-rich school profiles which make clear what courses were available, what type of courseload the student chose and how s/he performed within that context. Some show the grade distribution for each and every course. Students who took the easy load in order to get the 4.0 will be “outed” in this system, which is - I believe - what xiggi is discussing. </p>
<p>Even without that extensive type of data - imo - a good school profile shows what’s really going on. In our PHS, the school shows decile distributions for both weighted and unweighted 100-point scale GPAs. If student A has a 95uw/95w and another student has a 93uw/121w, it is clear who has been taking the more challenging courseload. The first student might show up “top 10%” unweighted, but that student will be w-a-a-yy down the ladder in the weighted deciles.</p>
<p>In our school, it is the second type of student who is admitted to HYPS/AWS and other competitive schools. The first student doesn’t make it (and, actually, usually knows not to try - the guidance at our school being very good in steering students to the right match).</p>
<p>I don’t think that high school is all about college.
I think that if a student is taking the most challenging course load for them and is getting good grades- that should be acknowledged- by ranking if that is how the high school does it.
Colleges can see- what classes applicants are taking- they are not going to be fooled by a student taking typing- home ec - family education- and regular english and social students and getting straight As when another student is taking AP physics & calc, history and AP lit.
While I agree that some students may transfer to easier schools, take lighter loads in an effort to boost their rank- that seems like an idiotic idea.
If you are planning on attending college- aren’t you best served by preparing yourself the best you can? How is taking easier courses going to do that? Unless of course you are only interested in getting the degree, and not in the work that is required to recieve the degree.
The UW recently started looking at each application individually and claims that , that has boosted minority applications and acceptances.
*For freshman admission, applications from African Americans are up 16 percent from this time last year; applications from Asian Americans are up 15 percent and from Latinos, 7 percent. Applications from whites, meanwhile, are down by less than 1 percent.</p>
<p>Last year the UW stopped using its Admissions Index, which ranked students by grades and test scores and automatically admitted about half of new students. Instead, staffers now read each application individually. In arriving at a holistic assessment, admissions staff members consider academic performance alongside other factors such as whether a student has overcome adversity or shown leadership skills.</p>
<p>The UW is spending an extra $200,000 annually on the new system and has hired 20 graduate students part time to help read the applications. UW officials say the new process will help them pick the best students. Other top public universities around the country are also adopting similar holistic systems.</p>
<p>“It’s certainly labor-intensive, but we really feel like we are getting a much fuller picture of applicants,” said Provost Phyllis Wise. “We are really happy that we get to know students before they come.”</p>
<p>In all, more than 16,500 people have applied to be freshmen next fall, up 4 percent from this time last year. Students had a Jan. 17 deadline to apply, and officials are working though the last of the applications now. Officials expect to offer admission to more than 11,000 students as they aim to fill 5,000 freshman slots*</p>
<p>I’m glad to hear that about UW. We had two sisters apply to UW. The older one who was white gained admission. She did the full IB and her grades were better. Her younger sister who was black, adopted, did some IB work, improved her grades in her last year to straight As, did great in her IB subjects but wasn’t admitted. Too bad for the school. I liked the younger one better as a person but she was shy and lacked confidence. She had spent her whole life, black in a white world. She had learned skills that so many wouldn’t have a clue about. So I am glad they are taking the time to look at the person now.</p>
<p>EK I agree with everything you have said. I will also point out that there a colleges that will (either for admissions and/or merit scholarships) treat every hs equally. IMO,that is ridiculous. Every hs is not equal. I believe the kid who is in an honors track at a less competitive hs, perhaps where 30-40% of students do not continue on to college does better in admissions/merit aid than the student who attends a hs where 99% students continue on to college, and 90%+ continue on to a 4 year college/university. The former may fair better in admissions and I think they do better in the merit aid department. This has been my personal observation only.</p>
<p>Jmmom, thank you for your post. I am, indeed, advocating for using more information to correctly assessing the performance … and choices of students.</p>
<p>I do not believe that there is a perfect system, and that is why I would prefer to see schools presenting the information in a number of ways -ranked vs unranked or weighted vs unweighted. We can safely assume that today’s technology should make the exercise rather trivial for HS. </p>
<p>However, I also would like to see this type of information used outside the context of college admissions. I believe that receiving DETAILED information as soon as the first year of HS could help parents address deficiencies earlier. How many parents are there who are used to receive straight A’s report in middle school, but are shocked to learn that the student may not do that well or even fail subjects in 10th grade? Another scenario may be that a student gets stellar grades, but that the same perfection is shared by 75 to 90% of the class. Without objective data points, I think that families are flying blindfolded, and that the day of reckoning might not be as pleasant as one would expect.</p>
<p>I think we are going to have to go to a national test- besides the SATs to determine if students are learning what they need to.
Not saying I agree with that- I think if the curriculum is rigourous and teaching standards ( and certification) is high- from K-12 then students will learn.
But even with NCLB there are widely varying standards- our state for example requires passage of the test ( although the actual questions are not available for families to review) to graduate from high school.
Last year- I believe 40% or so of students passed all three sections.
The test is given in 10th grade which makes no sense. If it is an appropriate test for 10th graders- ( about which there is discussion) then why is it being used to evaluate only half of the learning in high school?
Why not have a test given at the end of high school? ( or the beginning so we can better determine where students are at?)</p>
<p>I’m still agin it, and I ain’t afeared to say so!</p>
<p>It’s clear that not ranking is going to hurt those from most unknown schools. For schools to think they will benefit in the same way the top schools do by not ranking is silly.</p>
<p>Let’s remember what’s at the core of this move, the need to ensure, Lake Wobegone fans, that all children “end up above average”.</p>