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CarolynLawrence
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Posted: Sun Mar 5th, 2006 10:20 pm |
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Did anyone catch that article in the NY Times yesterday about high schools giving up ranking (link: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/05/education/05rank.html)
According to the article, 40% of high schools have stopped ranking students, and admissions officers are getting vexed. The admissions people in the article said that when a school doesn't rank it's hard for them to figure out what a student's grades and curriculum mean in the context of their high school. One officer said that he thinks not ranking forces them to look more closely at test scores, another said they try to guestimate where the student would fall from info. in the school profile.
I find the article chilling because my kids' school just stopped ranking this year. Any thoughts or experiences on how ranking/not ranking is done at your high school and whether it has any effect on admissions? In my daughter's case, it didn't seem to hurt her (although one school was miffed about no rankings being available when it came time to make merit decisions) -- but she wasn't in the tippy top of the class anyhow, so it may have actually helped
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Chedva
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Posted: Sun Mar 5th, 2006 10:36 pm |
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My d's high school doesn't rank, and as far as I know never did. It hasn't seemed to hurt most kids, although I do know that there are some schools that don't "like" kids from her HS. Maybe the failure to rank has something to do with it? I personally don't like ranking at highly competitive schools - the difference between #1 and #10 could be a couple hundredths of a point - it's not statistically significant but can make a big difference if colleges do indeed rely on ranking.
In fact, to try to discourage competition, the school doesn't even tell you your GPA until the end of jr. year - I've had to calculate it every year, both weighted and unweighted!
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Anoel
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Posted: Sun Mar 5th, 2006 10:44 pm |
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Well I know my school hasn't been ranking for awhile because of the competitive nature of the school. Personally I like it because it does seem to lessen the competition and two because I know I wouldn't be at the top. What bothers me more is the lack of weighting and a weird gpa scale at my school. But all of this is explained in the school profile and I think any college can get a general nature of where a student stands because of this. I think colleges don't like that so much because it does take more time to do it and its not as specific but I understand the high school concerns as well. I don't like that the lack of ranking is hurting college admittance chances though, doesn't seem fair to the students. I'm not sure of the effect on admissions but I think that with most of the schools the students in my school apply to, the schools already know of the quality of the school so rankings don't matter as much.
There was actually an article about how schools in our area were getting rid of rankings and my school was mentioned as one that has been doing so. This one kid didn't like it but that was mostly because he had a good chance of becoming valedictorian and since we don't have rankings, it isn't calculated and our class president does the speech instead. I actually wouldn't mind to have a valedictorian/saludictorian and no other rankings but I doubt that'd be possible.
Interesting article though, I wonder how colleges will deal with the issue as more schools get rid of rankings.
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Wendy (wjb)
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Posted: Sun Mar 5th, 2006 10:45 pm |
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As a matter of policy, my son’s start-up high school does not rank students or weight grades (although, to the school’s credit, there is an expanding array of APs taught by terrific faculty, and grading is tough). After reading that article, I’m about to begin lobbying the college counselor and the education committee to at least begin including grade distribution info in the school profile. I don’t think new/relatively unknown schools do their kids any favors in the college admissions process by failing to provide at least SOME concrete data about student performance. Probably well-know schools (public and private) that have well-established relationships with colleges don't need to rank. But when a school is a relatively unknown commodity, colleges need some objective yardstick by which to measure an applicant’s performance vis-à-vis his/her peers. As the article suggests, hazy (or nonexistent) statistics just exasperate adcoms!
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Fireflyscout
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Posted: Sun Mar 5th, 2006 10:53 pm |
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It doesn't surprise me because it is so difficult for school districts to create a fair ranking system.
As an example, this past grading period my daughter's GPA went up significantly, but her rank went down 11 slots. Why? Becuase she is taking choir, which is not weighted. Other students are either taking all AP classes, or early dismissal (which has the effect of giving heavier weight to weighted classes).
I think school boards are tired of parents screaming "Unfair!" and are just choosing to drop ranking entirely.
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celebrian23
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Posted: Sun Mar 5th, 2006 11:13 pm |
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My school does rank, and in the end, I don't think it's a positive thing. I've seen plenty of cases of my classmates, who are ranked far higher than me, stacking up on AP classes they have no interest in, in order to jump up or mantain their spaces. It creates this friction- how many AP classes can I fit in this year? And then there's the problem that my school isn't overly competetive, but my class is. For example, if I was in the class ahead or behind my class I'd easily be in the top 10% but I barely am in the top 20% in my class. I think more people would take classes that interest them- maybe say take photography instead of a class they don't want or need- if schools didn't rank.
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leftcoast
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Posted: Sun Mar 5th, 2006 11:29 pm |
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I also think that ranking ends up being unfair because of the various ways of gaming the system. My daughter was tied for #2 in her class, but dropped to 5 because of other kids submitting accumulated grades from outside college courses the fall of their senior year, which are all weighted at her school. (Of course, kids taking the college courses have the option of choosing whether or not to submit the grades to the high school - so they are only going to submit the grades if they have A's).
My son was at a high school that ranked but did not weight grades, so he was always at the 11% level, even though he had straight A's in all academic subjects and took every Honors & AP class they offered. I think a 4.3 weighted GPA -- well above my daughter's, which is around 4.1 weighted. But he had Bs & Cs in P.E.
I know for a fact that he was waitlisted at Pomona because of his class rank (I called and asked). It didn't matter, as Pomona was not a top choice for him, but the point is that there is a clear example of where his decile ranking undercut him.
I also think its disingenous of colleges to claim that they need the ranking info to assess the school, because they really just need to also ask for a school profile in terms of grades.
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Northeastmom
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Posted: Sun Mar 5th, 2006 11:36 pm |
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My son's hs does not rank for the same reason as Anoel's hs. However, at his hs they send a profile containing a spreadsheet showing the number of As-Fs in each subject. Some colleges use this to determine rank anyway. I have feeling that other than the more prestigious schools, they do not bother with the chart to try and rank.
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CarolynLawrence
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Posted: Mon Mar 6th, 2006 12:54 am |
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Aneol and Celebrian, Did you guys get asked about your rank at all when you did college interviews? I just asked my daughter and it was never mentioned. The only time it came up was when the admissions rep at Beloit asked for her rank (after she was accepted) for her to be considered for one of their merit scholarships. They ended up just using her unweighted GPA which fit into their criteria.
I think it's fascinating that something that just a few years ago we were talking about being so important in college admissions is now dissolving away. It sounded to me like the admissions officers in the article weren't too happy about it either, but, to be honest, I agreed with the guidance counselor who said not ranking forces admissions committees to really look at the whole candidate, not just some arbitrary number that may or may not mean anything much.
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quiltguru
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Posted: Mon Mar 6th, 2006 01:09 am |
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| Don't you think that most HS can and do provide information to allow the college to figure it out? My D's school doesn't weight (which I think is a mistake, but what can I say?) and doesn't OFFICIALLY rank. This is what they say and this is what they put in their profile. However in the HS profile, the school includes a histogram of GPA distributions by decile. The school can easily figure out the rank by looking at the histogram and the student's GPA. In addition, as an independent school, it belongs to the national academic honor society called the Cum Laude Society. Only the top 10% of the junior class is eligible. So, if the kid has been awarded Cum Laude, then the college knows they are in the top 10% of their class and vice versa.
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overeducated
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Posted: Mon Mar 6th, 2006 01:09 am |
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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....).
It waits to designate val/sal (1 each, how retro) until very near to graduation; so no effect on college admissions.
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. Like Chedva's, it doesn't tell you your GPA until end of jr. year.
In a school like this, the difference between being in the top 10% or not can be the difference between 93.45 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.
As I said, 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 schools which game the system, we are at a disadvantage. At our school only 10% are in the top 10%. Other schools have 44 - 50 "valedictorians." Or they dole out 4.0s pretty readily and rank the 20% or more of kids who get them as "top 10%." So while our school's admissions results are successful, I'm not sure how successful the system is for the kids just below top 10%. Might the students in the 11-15% have fared better in admission to the "most selective" schools if our decile ranking either wasn't reported or our school played the "20% in the top 10%" game?Last edited on Mon Mar 6th, 2006 01:12 am by overeducated
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Anoel
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Posted: Mon Mar 6th, 2006 01:14 am |
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I never did a college interview so it didn't come up there. In relation to that, most forms that I saw about adding stats had some option to say high school doesn't rank so it is changing on that front. On the merit scholarships that I've checked, most seem to either only ask for gpa/sats (and ecs and other things like that) or have a gpa, sat OR rank component so it seems to be changing there.
Oh and the way my school does the profiles is list the number of students who have A+, As, etc so you can sort of figure it out but you cant get the exact percentages.
Last edited on Mon Mar 6th, 2006 01:15 am by Anoel
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overeducated
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Posted: Mon Mar 6th, 2006 01:15 am |
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Fireflyscout - Our school system is a very responsive one and a very good one. In weighting grades, they long ago went to a system in which only academic core are included in the weighted GPA. Last year, a parent noticed that - even with this limitation - students who took academic classes which are "unleveled" (eg, Latin which doesn't come in CP/Honors/AP levels) were penalized in the same way your D is due to her choir class. Our school now only counts academic core/leveled classes in the weighted GPA. You might want to approach your school administration/school board with this concern.
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Driver
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Posted: Mon Mar 6th, 2006 03:23 pm |
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Most colleges that we looked at haven't been relying as much on high school rankings for a number of years. You can see it in their common data sets---less than half of their admittees came from high schools that rank (Princeton was as low as 37% 5 years ago. Nevertheless, they all seem to extrapolate from the application data, and come up with estimated class rank, although they don't call it that. Williams claims that 87% of their class of 2006 came from the top 10%--although their CDS info shows that only 38% came from schools that submitted class rank. This has become typical. The relevant section in the CDS (for any college) is C-10
Last edited on Mon Mar 6th, 2006 03:28 pm by Driver
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CarolynLawrence
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Posted: Mon Mar 6th, 2006 04:24 pm |
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Driver,
That's a very good point about looking at the common data set info. to see the percentages that rank - gives you at least some indication of how important the college may really consider it, especially at schools where the number submitting rank is really low. I hadn't thought of that. When I get some free time (HA HA) I will try to look at the data from a few schools and see if there is any variance among them for the percentages reporting rank. That should be interesting.
Carolyn
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Driver
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Posted: Mon Mar 6th, 2006 05:18 pm |
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CarolynLawrence wrote: gives you at least some indication of how important the college may really consider it
Well there's the rub. Using Williams' CDS as an example again, they claim that class rank is of the highest order of importance. I think this is of a piece with the issue of whether students from schools without weighted GPAs are at a disadvantage; the answer seems to be: not in most cases, as the admissions people go through a transcript and apply their own formulae to determine weight and rank.
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westkymom
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Posted: Tue Mar 7th, 2006 12:12 am |
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Well, I think that my son's high school is going to be the one that Ya'll (southern term) will be angry with. They don't weight gpa's at all and they end up with 11 valedictorians at the end of the year. I can only hope that the colleges my son applies to will take that into consideration. He takes AP everything and Enriched everything because he just wants to learn as much as he can. But the kids who take "regular" classes (not AP or Enriched) and perhaps not as challenging as Calculus and Physics and who pull a 4.0 GPA occupy not only the valedictorian and salutorian spots, but also the top 10% of the class spots as well. My son is in the top 25% of his class. But at his high school, it's very, very crowded at the top.
--Rhonda
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Driver
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Posted: Tue Mar 7th, 2006 12:19 am |
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westkymom wrote: But the kids who take "regular" classes (not AP or Enriched) and perhaps not as challenging as Calculus and Physics and who pull a 4.0 GPA occupy not only the valedictorian and salutorian spots, but also the top 10% of the class spots as well. My son is in the top 25% of his class. Yes, the admissions folks will sort that out. That's why every single one of the most selective schools tell you that most important thing you can do is take the most rigorous course of study available to you. They're not fooled by this stuff. Be of good cheer!
Last edited on Tue Mar 7th, 2006 12:22 am by Driver
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Northeastmom
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Posted: Tue Mar 7th, 2006 01:31 am |
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| They say that you should take the most challenging courses, but in the end I have found that there are schools who do not sort this out for merit aid. Some schools do not distinguish between courses, or high school profile. They have a chart and your gpa needs to be xyz for a certain scholarship. Some recalculate the gpa (they may treat an AP the same as a regular class). They may not distinguish between a poor performing hs and an superior performing school, so the gpas from the differing schools are treated equally.
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westkymom
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Posted: Tue Mar 7th, 2006 04:00 am |
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Driver, what you have said encourages me greatly. Of course, what Northeastmom says is most depressing. However, I am satisfied if we can only get past the admissions part of it.
You know, I am only now realizing how little I understand about where my son is, comparatively, in his high school performance. Since I really don't know what percent of his class he is in, how do I know what is a reach school and what is just a fit school? I'm suddenly very confused. My son has a 3.4 GPA in the most challenging courses that his HS offers. Should he go ahead and try for places like Harvey Mudd and Rose-Hulman? Or the Most selective LACs? ....maybe the fog will lift and I will be able to see this issue more clearly.
--Rhonda
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