Congratulations! Your child has a 4.0 GPA, has taken every possible honors, AP and dual enrollment course offered at his high school, and a perfect score on the ACT.
On top of this, he was just announced as the valedictorian for his graduating class. He is obviously going to be accepted to any Ivy League school he applies to solely because he is the best in his class, right?
While his class rank may have made him a prime candidate for college 20 years ago, there has been a recent shift in college acceptance requirements. Class rank is being rightfully ditched, as schools are eliminating it from their calculations.
College admissions officers are looking beyond class rank
To start, many colleges and universities do not look at class rank
anymore. According to the National Association of College Admission (NACA), postsecondary schools look at far more than class rank, including overall and college prep GPAs, test scores, recommendations and personal qualities and interests. In fact, only 9% of colleges claimed that class rank is an important metric to observe on college applications.
A study conducted at multiple highly selective colleges found that admissions offices look beyond class rank and place greater emphasis on extracurricular activities, essays, recommendations and institutional fit.
These are some of the biggest reasons students that are ranked at the top of their class are rejected by colleges or universities.
Class rank compares students only to their local peers
By looking at class rank, schools are limiting their comparison to a small subset of people.
This leads me to another reason class rank should be abolished: Students are compared only with classmates they grew up with. This metric is limited, as it is only a local comparison. It provides the admission board with nothing about the students other than the fact they were at the top of their specific class.
The reason this is not as telling as some might think is this student could be at a school with a bunch of students that score below average, making it very easy to be named top of the class. Also, stellar students could be bumped out of their high school’s top 10% ranking simply because of the students they went to school with. If we are limited to this information, and some students are ending up with a disadvantage, class rank should only be used as a tool for local comparison. Ultimately, by providing a class rank, students are simply comparing themselves to those they grew up around, and not those that are also applying to the same college or university.
An obsession with ranking can distract from meaningful experiences
The importance of GPA has been historically labeled as a necessity to get into a good college. Many students enter high school with this mentality, and that drives them up to their senior year, when there should have been a heavier focus on other application metrics, one of which is extracurricular activities. This can be related to the work being done at High Tech High School in California and what they’re doing to have students look beyond the grade and more at what they are accomplishing.
Of course, students want to graduate high school and transition into college, but educators are reminding them that the grade is not the only thing that matters; more importantly, it is the learning and hands-on experiences that happen along the way.
No standard formula makes class rank difficult to compare
Finally, schools do not have a baseline for how class rank is calculated. Some schools may place a higher weight on college prep classes, while another school may treat all classes the same regarding rigor. When a college admissions board member is looking at class rank for various applicants, they are unsure if both schools placed the same weight in the same areas. By not having a standardized practice for calculating this metric, schools are unfairly comparing students when it comes to college acceptance.
Colleges and universities are appropriately removing class rank as a metric on applications for postsecondary acceptance and high schools are halting their calculations of this metric as well, as the removal is creating a fairer system for college seeking students.
There is a greater focus on other metrics, and the sooner students realize grades are not the only factor in college admissions, the better off they will be.
Nicholas Devin Roberts is the science department chair and teaches biology and Algebra I at Sycamore High School in Pleasant View, Tennessee. He is pursuing an Ed.D. in instructional leadership at Union University.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Why valedictorians still get rejected by elite colleges | Opinion
