what if my HS does not rank students??

CC_Admin
Mon, 22 Sep 2008 13:29:46 +0000

My cadet’s public hs of 1900 (and in fact all the schools in our district) stopped ranking 2 years ago to discourage students from ‘gaming’ the system and to encourage them to take electives. The more competitive students would either not take unweighted courses or only take them ‘pass/fail’ so as not to hurt their GPA. Students in the IB/AP weighted grade programs generally have GPAs > 4.0 so getting a 4.0/A in an elective hurt their GPA and ranking. Most elective courses were unweighted (eg choir, non-IB art) so students fighting for that top 5-10% would simply not take them if the teacher did not permit ‘pass/fail’. The whole issue went to the school board. Anyway, it seems to have worked to some degree to release the dectile only. They also got rid of valedictorian and salutatorian. After the first year, no one missed it. I think they were relieved to get the pressure off.

One college admissions officer told us they got around the ranking problem by calculating their own GPA - throw out electives and unweight core courses. They also told us that universities are well aware of the reputations of various high schools and definitely take that into consideration.

The dectile ranking did not keep my d from getting an LOA at USMA or USNA.