In 1997, a bill was passed that allowed for automatic admission to public universities for students in the top 10% of their class in the state of Texas. Since then, high schools have been forced to rank at least their top 10% of students in each class. This provides an excellent opportunity for kids in less populated or competitive schools to be able to go to big universities like the ones in Texas. That was the original plan. What it has now done for more competitive schools like ours has caused unnecessary pressure and stress on every kid to outperform everyone around them. What the ranking system does best is add too many negative things, and take away too many positive things to a teenagers life. This causes them to miss out on the years they should be enjoying most.
Anytime class rank is brought up around me, I always hear opposing views. I have heard people say It’s not discouraging to be ranked here because you have to be really smart. The reality of it however, and what I have heard more often is that the ranking can be discouraging, and that you feel like you work so hard and sacrifice so much but still are never good enough. Staying in the top 10% promotes grade chasers and cheating, it’s impossible to be in the top 10% without outsourcing some work.
The opposing views go beyond students. Institutions like Harvard are still heavily taking into account acceptance rate, while the overall number of universities taking class rank into account has gone down significantly from 23% in 2007, to just 7% in 2023 according to College Board. Many colleges have gone from using it as a heavy tool, to seeing just as one tool of many.
Class ranking can make “good” students look like slackers that couldn’t care less about school, and students that are the same level look like overachievers just because they may be taking a higher weighted course. This can lead to the good students being discouraged to try in school, and can lead to the students ranked feeling pressure from others.
Ranking students solely on GPA is an outdated form of rank and does not reflect how good of a student they may be for college. The current ranking system does not take into account volunteer hours or extracurricular activities at all, but strictly a students grade point average.
Ranking makes everyone a little uptight and creates an environment that produces cheaters and negates the incentive of learning. It’s extremely likely that nearly all students have cheated on an assignment. With the cut throat competitive nature of the class ranking, students feel pressured to because others are.
