Should high schools compute class rank?

Is this perhaps a result of grade inflation? I think it used to be much rarer for a student to have a 4.0 and a 1600.

It’s a curious kind of inflation, in which there is an absolute upper limit–kind of like price controls that set an absolute ceiling.

It indeed is likely that a similar mechanism is why some law schools no longer issue class rankings. Recent years have seen the development of a caste system in the increasingly glutted legal profession. A comparatively small percentage of law school graduates get high-paying, prestigious jobs with top law firms, while most graduates have to scuffle around in the hopes of making a lower-middle-class living. Because law schools love to brag about the high salaries their graduates earn, they’re willing to do whatever is necessary to boost graduate earnings, which may include being vague about class rankings for the reasons you have outlined.

This is all part and parcel of the ridiculous tendency to devalue what objective universal measures there do exist, namely the SAT and achievement tests. Throw in grade compression in both high schools and colleges and you really hurt many of the best students.

Without class rank, getting straight A’s becomes even more important, which penalizes kids who are really bright but who bomb a tough class or two in a very good school.

At Caltech and MIT, I think that for internationals (who are judged by a much higher standard than domestic applicants) success in International Math or Physics Olympiads is almost necessary since these are so tough and discriminating.

Of course, all of this is made worse by the fact that HYP reject 4.0 1600 students for some 3.5 1400 kid with “good ECs” and “leadership potential.” Leaving aside whether this is even desirable, I have seen no study that corroborates their claim that they can in fact SPOT leadership or creativity in hs students. And let’s not get into the disease of sports, legacies and AA.

Someday a super elite school will form which will only judge on academic, objective criteria but until then, we have the revenue max weirdness of Ivy League college admissions which are nothing like GRAD school admissions to those same schools. [Try telling Princeton Econ that you should get into their Phd program because you did community service and acted in a film even though your GRE Math is 650.]

Who’s going to rank the high schools?

That student with 1600 SATs and a 4.0 GPA who doesn’t get into Harvard or Yale can count himself lucky. I feel sorry for those deluded students who think that they’re going to get the best possible education at an Ivy League school. Far better to go to a smaller, less prestigious college where you’re actually going to meet the professor. I once had the opportunity to read the freshman English reading list at Brown–practically all feminists and queer studies, with nothing written before about 1970. Compare this to my the reading list at my own alma mater (University of the South in Sewanee, TN), where we read a Shakespeare play every two weeks, with a generous serving of 15-19th century English poetry. Which school do you think better serves its students?

“This is all part and parcel of the ridiculous tendency to devalue what objective universal measures there do exist, namely the SAT and achievement tests.”

Oh, JN … I am an achievement-test expert. I scored 34 on the ACT back when 35 was the top score, 1510 on the SAT, 2240 on the GRE, 169 on the LSAT, and except for some night-before on the LSAT, I never cracked a test-prep book, let alone a Kaplan course. Not perfect scores, but enough to pay my tuition wherever I went, and to win fellowships from grad schools.

But I’m also lazy and procrastinating and too inclined to think I can do everything at the last minute, traits which impaired my GPA, as they should have.

Achievement tests are “objective,” perhaps, but they leave out a lot.

At my Top Law School That Does Not Rank (Penn), there was never any indication that it was to “fool” employers. Almost everyone got a good enough job.

What chosing not to rank did, though, was to do away with the need to compete. We were all students learning together, not competing for a slot. Everyone was happy to share notes or outlines. Lots of inclusive study groups. It just made Law School a much better experience.

People who want to rank want school to be a competition rather than a learning experience. But it doesn’t have to be.

Here’s a thought.

Practices such as vagueness on class rank and grade inflation are actually services that educators use to compete against each other and justify higher educational expenditures. In other words, part of the higher cost of education is the value added by grade inflation et al.

jn: Taking things other than grades and SATs into account for undergraduate admission is not ridiculous precisely because graduate and undergraduate programs are not, as you imply, analogous. Graduate programs exist to train people in narrow specializations and, therefore, are going to admit on the basis of criteria which speak to people’s ability to succeed in those narrow ways. Most undergraduate schools (in America, anyway) are looking at a much broader educational experience, involving not just your major but a broad spectrum of academics, and not just academics but a whole-person cultivation. Their cultures and extracurricular offerings are, in fact, part of how they distinguish themselves in the market. Therefore it makes sense for them to admit people based on criteria which speak to their ability to succeed in, and contribute to, the whole culture.

badidea: You had plenty of time to check your work, but I spent a summer teaching SAT prep, so do believe me when I say that you are very much in the minority. Most students do not have time to finish or, if they have, they have not done their work with any sort of care. Adding more questions would help to discriminate scores at the high end (where I suspect you, and most MR readers, cluster), but it would be meaningless if not counterproductive as far as most test-takers are concerned.