<p>Our competitive but probably not especially well known NJ public high school eliminated ranking this year; colleges still receive weighted and unweighted GPAs. The top ten students usually are accepted to top ten colleges and LACs. Given this year’s ED results, I bet that some of the top students will be hurt during this year’s transition. Colleges will probably rely more on SATs and essays this year. Before rank was eliminated, the Guidance Department consulted other nearby schools and surveyed a number of colleges; however, their results were NOT similar to those conveyed by colleges in the NYTimes article. It was clear that the Board of Ed and Guidance Department did not care about students’ or parents’ opinions in making this decision. The elimination of rank was done with the intent of benefitting most of the students but that does not mean the top kids out of a class of 400.</p>
<p>My all boys’ day/boarding Jesuit school’s policy is not to rank students. They do publish a grade distribution chart, where they give ranges and the amount of students within the ranges (I don’t know how they’re broken down.). We don’t have a val or a sal, but a “academic achievement award,” which I guess is the same thing. </p>
<p>However, we all got our transcripts and know our cumulative grades, so we know who’s at the top. I think I’m around four or five.</p>
<p>But apparently, they’re a bit disingenuous when they say they don’t rank. I was chatting with my counselor and she let it slip that they actually do provide rank for the top 10-15 students (our class size is around 120).</p>
<p>mini: LOL But…at my kids’ private schools (which requires the passing of an entrance exam) all the kids are above average. They would not have been admitted otherwise.</p>
<p>When kids attend a true “college prep” school which requires the following then the entire graduating class is going to be “above average”.
4 years of Math (all real math classes - no general math or easy math)
4 years of Science (Bio, Chem, Physics, AP bio or AP chem)
4 years of English
4 yeas of Social Science
3 years of Foreign language
plus a variety of PE, Fine Arts, Health, Computer Science,etc</p>
<p>“mini: LOL But…at my kids’ private schools (which requires the passing of an entrance exam) all the kids are above average.”</p>
<p>That’s true of virtually every “open-enrollment” predominantly white PUBLIC school in the country.</p>
<p>From the Harvard Crimson, March 8, 2006:</p>
<p>Officials Dismiss Ranking Concerns</p>
<p>With high schools steadily abandoning class rankingsfrustrating many college admissions officersHarvard admissions officials said they are unfazed by the decrease in quantitative information that high schools provide about students.</p>
<p>Many administrators, including those at Brown University, Vanderbilt University, and Swarthmore College, said that decisions not to rank high school students have hurt the evaluation processes at their schools, The New York Times reported last week.</p>
<p>Admissions officials at Harvard College say they seek out more information when class rankings are not provided, Director of Admissions Marlyn McGrath Lewis 70-73 wrote in an e-mail. </p>
<p>[…]Cambridge Rindge and Latin School administrators said that they still rank their students for practical purposes.</p>
<p>We have a lot of scholarships that still use rankings, said Cambridge Rindge and Latin School principal Sybil N. Knight. We wouldnt want to deny those opportunities to those students.</p>
<p>And some undergraduates also acknowledged the practicality of class rankings.</p>
<p>California actually uses a system that allows the top five percent of students to be assured into one of their top four picks in a UC school, Obi Ugwu-Oju 09, a graduate of Edison High School in Fresno, California, said.
[…]</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=511904[/url]”>http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=511904</a></p>
<p>Our local public HS (upper middle class HS) did away with class rank a few years ago … but does provide colleges info on which decile (sp?) students are in. A friend on the school board says that the data suggests the change has not effected the ability of grads to get into top schools … but to me it seems the big con is that the very top students are not identified and it might hurt them at top colleges (the colleges need to estimate how highly ranked the applicant is instead of knowing they are 5/500).</p>
<p>mini: I don’t know where any “open enrollment” public schools are. In Calif and here in Alabama, a kid has to attend where he lives. The “white” schools in Cal and AL certainly do have below average kids.</p>
<p>3togo – You are right re: no rank for top students at top schools. Our school eliminated class rank this year despite student objections. My S is 5/400 and his SATs are very good but not 2250+; this seemed to hurt him in the ED round. Am holding my breath RD.</p>
<p>
In California it depends on the district. I live in an open-enrollment district; kids simply select where they want to go. My son went to an alternative high here that draws from all over. (Though definitely not <em>white</em> - his high school is also the most ethnically diverse in the district - meaning the most balanced among different races.) My d. attends a magnet in a district in neighboring city where her dad lives - as “alternate” choices on the enrollment form she was able to designate whatever high school she wanted, although there was no guarantee she would have been assigned to her top choice high school if she hadn’t gotten accepted into the magnet. </p>
<p>So between those 3 elements: open-enrollment, alternative, & magnet - there can be a lot of choices. </p>
<p>Though I do have to remind mini, around here an “above-average” public high school is NOT predominantly <em>white</em>. Sorry, but the way you find a top-notch public high school (or university) is you look for one that is prodominantly Asian.</p>
<p>I have been told that this is the reality concerning the top students from well known high schools who are applying applying to the top lacs and universities. By comparing the GPAs of its aplicants from John Doe High School a school like Harvard or Yale will effecitively rank the GPAs of students from that school. Given that most universities have some preconcieved guidelines for how many students they will accept from each of these high schools in a given year, these schools’ abandonment of class rank is not all that significant. THE GPAs BASICALLY PROVIDE THE CLASS RANK.</p>
<p>Since colleges consider the applicants as one common pool, or at most plus one more for international applicants, the relevance of the numerical ranking, which necessarily is school-specific, as a common yardstick to sort applicants, is lost.</p>
<p>Therefore I’m all for doing away with the numerical ranking as we certainly have more than enough of equitable criteria to pair colleges with their desired cohorts.</p>
<p>“I don’t know where any “open enrollment” public schools are. In Calif and here in Alabama, a kid has to attend where he lives. The “white” schools in Cal and AL certainly do have below average kids.”</p>
<p>Relative to the rest of the state, in aggregate, hardly (check out the data for yourself - all you have to do is look at average “school performance” data.) (Caveat in parts of California for the number of Japanese/Chinese/Korean/Indian-American students - not Asian, though - likely the worst performing schools in the state are in Fresno, with the highest population of Hmong/Mien/Upland Lao Asian students.)(I misused the term “open enrollment” - all I meant is that one didn’t have to take a test to get in.)</p>
<p>“I don’t know where any “open enrollment” public schools are. In Calif and here in Alabama, a kid has to attend where he lives. The “white” schools in Cal and AL certainly do have below average kids.”</p>
<p>This is not true for many parts of Ca. My teenagers, for example, went to their local school for only their first 2 or 3 years. Since then, my kids enrolled in other schools in or out of our district. My D is currently enrolled in a neighboring district.</p>
<p>Our school district is eliminating class ranking, going to decile system. I think it takes effect next year, and to be quite frank, I’m not sure how they’re treating val/sal going forward. I thing we’re the third largest public school system in the country, so numberswise it’ll be big. The local belief is that class rankings bring out the worst in the students and parents, with the following anecdotes highlighting the reason for changing the practice:</p>
<p>Students taking heaping helpings of online courses to raise GPA. When the spectre of “those courses won’t be calculated toward GPA” reared its head, parents stated that they wouldn’t have their kids sign up for them - obviously these courses aren’t being taken for their intrinsic value.
Students pressuring teachers to assign extra credit work to differentiate themselves from each other; or bugging teachers to accept work performed outside the classroom to raise GPA.
One infamous student “valedictorian shopped”, transferring into another school his senior year to gain that distinction. Obviously the newly annointed salutatorian got blindsided. This was a bad biggie, but since this is an enormous system with standardized transcripts, it worked for that “highly motivated” weasel.</p>
<p>Actually, the list goes on and on, and endless! For what? For miniscule tenths of points of perceived advantage that are truly honorless. It’s the equivalent of performance enhancing drugging on the part of world class athletes. Shame on us that it’s come to this. I’m sure there’s a way to make GPA work properly, but like anything else, there are just way too many unethical students and parents who work the system. The school district probably didn’t want to painstakingly fine tune the policies and had seen other districts go in that direction so probably felt comfortable doing the same. I guess the burden will be back on the universities and colleges to decode the transcripts.</p>
<p>Scooter, I think that most people would want the cynical gamesmanship to end. All the anecdotes illustrate the abuse of a system, but do not indict the basic need for assessing the performance of students in their context. It would not be that hard for a school to establish a ranking based on a number of classes and a smaller number of COMMON electives. </p>
<p>Schools that cave in to pressure of parents or are unable to establish “anti-gaming” measures are now abdicating one of their expected functions.</p>
<p>Tiny differences in GPA, gamed or not, are not IMO indicative of meaningful differences in current performance in school or future performance in life. It is therefore inappropriate IMO to pretend that they are, and to mislead students and parents into thinking and acting as if they are, by issuing precise ranks.</p>
<p>How do they do it in Canada? India? Japan? I’m curious…is there a more equitable model out there? Let’s not reinvent the wheel.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This is rampant in my daughter’s program. My daughter took the recommended IB curriculum (which is pretty rigorous by itself) and got straight As. There were kids who got Bs ranked ahead of her because they have been taking online and college courses since sixth grade.</p>
<p>Are these online courses “college courses”? And are they legit? Do the kids have their online grades sent to their high schools in order to raise their grades?</p>
<p>Our district uses a health course through BYU for high school students because otherwise students are not able to take the courses they need to get into college, if they have to fulfill all the state reqs in the brick and mortar school.
If they are a college class, then they are legit, and if the district uses it for high school requirements, the college has to accept it
The reason isn’t to raise the GPA though- it is just to be able to take more academic classes. Considering the state only funds 5 classes a year for high school students, and that they require 2years of PE/Health, I think 1 & 1/2yrs of occupational education, as well as courses in the arts, it is difficult for students to take 4 years of science, math, english, foreign language and history as well.</p>