DD is a high school junior in her spring semester. She is ranked #1 of ~350 and worked really hard to set up her classes from 9th grade to get and keep that rank. Her brother graduated from same school in 2013 so she had the benefit of his experience to help her set up classes and decide what to take. It's tricky because there are many required courses like foreign languages, applied arts, fine arts, P.E., health and computer literacy that are not honors or APs that bring the gpa down. A student could take less classes and pull ahead of DD by dropping the foreign language, for example, and end up with a higher gpa. She planned it all out herself jumping through hoops just to be able to take the classes she needed. The counselor gave the kids their transcripts two weeks ago to sign up for senior classes and dd's clearly said rank #1.
Today, I looked at the school's academic profile online that gets sent to colleges and it says the school no longer ranks students! What?! How is this fair or even ethical? I think this new policy of not ranking students should have been phased in with the incoming new students and not changed midstream in the spring of dd's junior year right as she is preparing to apply for colleges. DD has some schools on her list that have full rides IF you are ranked 1 or valedictorian and meet certain test/gpa thresholds. Valedictorian is voted on by a committee at her school, not the top academic student, so rank 1 means something entirely different. There was no announcement made. It just appeared suddenly as if it was done "secretly" behind closed doors! How does the school even benefit from not ranking students? It's all computerized so is it really extra work? Who benefits?
Any suggestions? Of course, no one cares but the handful of kids that are highly ranked and I'm pretty sure no one knows yet because the transcripts showing ranking were just handed out. I sent an email to the "new" college counselor to clarify things and find out if they are going to phase it in but I know it is clearly written on the published school's academic profile page so there isn't much chance that it's a mistake. What would you do?
Honestly, the class of 2017 has had so many changes that this just seems like another slap in the face. Between the new PSAT, the new SAT, the new ACT writing issue, the prior prior year FAFSA announcement in Sept, it's been hard to keep up!
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