Dropped out of the top 10 in class

In most states, one’s high school class rank at graduation doesn’t matter much. And why? Because students have already earned admission to college by the time high school graduation rolls around. It’s not like Princeton University will rescind the admission of a student who slipped from first in their class to second because of an A- in AP Physics C.

So when we came across an article where a student, Jackson Hansen, groaned about how he could have slipped from salutatorian to sixth in his graduating class at his Dallas high school, Woodrow Wilson High School, because of a late change to its ranking system, we rolled our eyes.

Why does he care? What difference does it make? Doesn’t he realize these press pieces in which he complains about his high school rank will outlive his current frustrations?

At Texas High Schools, Top 6% Earn Automatic Admission to University of Texas at Austin

Yet, however foolish his public grumblings may be, the student is correct. The Dallas high school should not have drastically changed its ranking system mere days before graduation.

Hope Schreiber wrote in a piece about how this high school senior was shocked to see his class rank change days before commencement, “The change in rank was the result of certain International Baccalaureate courses, like biology, that would count as double credits starting this school year. If students took the classes in the previous year, they received one credit for completing it, whereas students who took it this year received double the credit and an advantage.”

Schrieber continues, “The district did not inform seniors that the International Baccalaureate courses now counted as double the credits, and the school didn’t use the new course codes to determine the class rank until April…Sophia Woods was one student who benefitted from the credit change decision, going from 38 in the class to 24. Her mother, Jennifer, told WFAA that she had already been accepted into the University of Arkansas, but now that she is in the school’s top 6 percent, she could be automatically admitted into the University of Texas, her dream school.”

Late Class Rank Change Impacted Automatic Admission to UT Austin

But correct as he may be, we have little sympathy for Hansen, whose rank slipped from salutatorian to sixth. However, we sympathize with students whose class rank fell below the top 6% in their graduating class because of the change in the ranking system.

And why? Because, as of 2023, students in the top 6% of their Texas high school graduating class enjoy automatic admission to one of America’s leading public schools (it used to be the top 7%, and, before that, it was the top 10%): the University of Texas at Austin. Likewise, students below the top 6% of their graduating class do not enjoy automatic admission to UT.

So while Woods’ story in which the class ranking change supercharged her ranking to within the top 6% and allowed her to achieve her college dream, one has to imagine that some students fell out of the top 6% and thereby lost their automatic admission to Texas’ leading public university as a result of the change.

And that’s wrong. Students and parents at Woodrow Wilson High School should have been informed much earlier in the school year about this change to the ranking system — especially when automatic admission to the state’s flagship university is at stake.

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A high school graduation with 213 valedictorians. A student denied college admission because they're in the top 7% but not 6% of their high school. These are strange days for high school class rankings.

Parents and students don't like them. High school administrators and college admissions officers have mixed feelings. Many schools (particularly wealthy ones) have eliminated class rank from transcripts, but several states have adopted policies rewarding highly ranked students: Texas, California, Florida, and at least five others auto-admit highly ranked students into public universities. (Some of those states have implemented this policy to increase diversity in their universities and help decrease the advantage held by students from wealthy school districts or who go to private schools.)

Class rankings don't matter. Except when then do. That confusion makes the discussion around the value and utility of rankings difficult. And the challenge begins with understanding what we're actually talking about when we say "class rankings."

At their simplest, class rankings order students according to GPA. But, of course, ranking is often not that simple. Many high schools weight their classes so that, for example, a B in a "regular" U.S. History class is worth 3.0 points, but a B in an honors class might be worth 3.4 points and a B in an AP class might be a 4.0. This means that for students to compete on class rank, they almost certainly need not just to do well but take as many (if not more) AP classes as their peers.

The pursuit of weighted grades adds to students' work and, likely, stress levels. But it also means they may be forced out of taking courses that could be academically or financially valuable for them, such as a dual credit course taken at a community college. It could save students more money by providing college credits and AP might not, but it might be a bad choice for a student competing for a top class ranking if the high school does not weight it as much an AP class. Or perhaps a student just wants to take studio art or chorus. Taking either could be personally enriching but ding the student's class ranking. Such choices limit a student's education.

It's perfectly rational to rate people and institutions on their performance. But rankings encourage us to make irrational distinctions. Is the top-ranked college in one survey that much better than numbers 2 or 20? The same applies to students. Is the top-ranked student in a school that much stronger than the remaining top 10? Maybe, but rankings won't tell you that. At some schools, the level of academic preparation is so high that students in the bottom half of their class might be ranked number one at another school.

There is anecdotal evidence that suggests eliminating class rank from a student's transcript can increase their odds of getting accepted into a college. One high school principal in Wisconsin claimed that after that his district dropped class rankings, the number of students admitted to the University of Wisconsin-Madison more than doubled. A Pennsylvania school district finally dropped class rankings, the Associated Press reported, after a "University of Pennsylvania admissions officer told school officials that a highly qualified graduate had been rejected because she was ranked 15th out of 320 students."

If these stories are true at a broader level, then students at high schools that use class ranks might be at a disadvantage. But ditching class rank comes with its own drawbacks, the biggest being that it becomes harder to evaluate a student's academic performances within their context.

An admissions officer considering a student with a less-than-stellar GPA (relative to other applicants) will have a better sense of the student's accomplishments if she is among the highest ranked students in her school. As evidence mounts of grade inflation occurring at a faster rate in wealthier schools, especially private ones, the move away from ranking at those places makes it harder to interpret GPAs. That problem will likely worsen as some of America's wealthiest private schools move to abandon GPAs and traditional grades altogether.

While there are conflicting signals about the utility of class rankings, the trend has decidedly been away from them. A survey of 220 colleges found only 9.1% gave rank considerable importance. That's down from 23% in 2007. (In states where class rank automatically admits a student, it's still clearly an important metric.)

That data reflects the class rank feedback loop: As more high schools have abandoned rankings, colleges have placed less importance on them, which in turn encourages high schools to drop them. The College Board's Annual Survey of Colleges collects information from more than 3,000 higher education institutions each year and asks what percentage of enrolled freshmen submitted a class ranking as part of their application. The average share of students in public and private institutions who submitted class rank declined about 10 points between 2007 and 2017. Highly selective colleges (i.e., those that accept no more than 25% of applicants), saw a 14-point decline over the same period. Ivy Plus schools recorded a 22-point drop.

Further research is needed to determine why highly selective schools tend to enroll more students from schools that don’t rank their students and whether being unranked might play a role in their being admitted. (One possibility is that these schools enroll more students from wealthy public and private high schools, where it’s more common to forego ranking.) But these differences between highly selective schools and more accessible ones, as well as differences between state systems that require or reward highly ranked students, raise questions about fairness and equity when it comes to class rank and its future.

If the trends continue, the ranking gap between large state systems—like Florida, Texas, and California—and highly selective private schools will only widen and it will be important to monitor it. But the most important question to consider might be the one posed to colleges and high schools by Thomas Guskey, a professor of educational psychology and an opponent of class ranking: "Is my purpose to select talent, or is my purpose to develop talent?"

The answer reaches far beyond class ranking to the heart of higher education and high school in America—indeed, to the heart of America itself.

Is it good to be in the top 10% of your class?

What's a Good Class Rank? The answer to this question depends on what colleges or universities you're interested in attending. At the majority of top colleges, such as Ivy League schools, 90 percent or more of accepted students are ranked in the top 10 percent of their class.

Am I in the top 10% of my class?

Schools calculate a student's class rank by taking their GPA and assessing it in relation to individuals from the same graduating class. If your grade has 100 students, and your GPA is better than 90 of them, then you are ranked number 10 and you're in the top 10 percent of your graduating class.

Is top 20% of graduating class good?

Is 20% class rank good? Yes! Earning a place in the 25% of your class is a good place to be for most colleges. For top tier schools and the entire Ivy League, most students aim for the top 10%.

Does withdrawing from a class look bad high school?

And while it may not be ideal, dropping a class is usually not a big deal. In most cases, dropped classes will simply appear as “W” (withdrawal) on your transcript. This means that the class will not count toward your GPA, but it also won't have a negative impact on your academic record.