Do states and individual schools factor "top % of graduating class" differently?

[Tap]

Ds did Running Start (community college in lieu of high school) in Washington his jr/sr year.  In the envelope with his diploma, he got an honors award for being in the top 10% of the graduating class for Washington state.  He recently applied for a job, which required that you put down your high school class rank.  He had to call the school last month to get it, The rank was something like 97 of 300, which would put him barely in the top 30% at the school.  His high school is medium sized for our area and has very average state test scores. The Running Start program is Very popular because they don't have a lot of advanced classes on the high school campus. They do not inflate grades for college classes like some do, so his B in College Calculus 2 as a Junior, is counted the same as someone else's Algebra or Geometry grade. He graduated with 30 high school credits (instead of the required 22) and  a 3.5 GPA. 

 

It just seems odd to me that he would have such a variance in % rank.  From top 10% in the state, to 30% at an unremarkable, average school?  Can anyone explain this to me? 

 

His ACT score was top 3% of the Nation.....would that have anything to do with it?

 

 

 

[Crimson Wife]

A lot of kids at our zoned high school qualify for UC admission under the statewide option even though they aren't in the top X% in the school (not sure what precisely the cutoff is, maybe 10%). The flipside is that there are schools out there in the state where even the valedictorian probably wouldn't be in the top X% of the state. Not necessarily because the student is any less intelligent but simply because access to resources is so unevenly distributed.

 

I don't know how WA calculates it, but here in CA there is some academic index taking into account both weighted GPA and standardized test scores.

[Farrar]

It makes sense to me because grades can be so subjective and at many schools you can plot out various things to inflate your overall average.  When I was in school, if I had been in a special program for the things I was really interested in, of course I would have had a better standing than my overall school standing that included things like my cruddy PE grades.  Some kids I knew purposefully put off things like PE classes that didn't have weighted GPAs for their final semester of their senior year to artificially inflate their standing for colleges.  And many people would never have taken things like arts or started a new foreign language because of the lack of opportunity for a weighted GPA score.

 

I think colleges look at it.  But I think a lot of it is in context if they know the schools.  Top 10% at a not well-rated high school is not going to look as good as top 20% at one of the top schools in your state, for example.

[gardenmom5]

there are different ways to calculate it.

 

here's the best way I can explain.   a straight across "graduated with a 3.5", and having each mutliple gpa recipient "tied".  Or how MANY *also* graduated with that 3.5 and no doubling of slots would bring other factors into play for graduation placement besides gpa. 

 

all of that really varies with schools - even within washington.   

[Plateau Mama]

If the local HS is very competitive this is totally possible. I am in WA. Our local HS had 30 kids (out of about 400) with a 4.0 this year. That is 7.5% of the graduating class.

 

If you go to areas of Eastern Wa where it is primarily farming/ immigrants you might get 1 student with a 4.0.

[Pawz4me]

The short answer is yes, I think.

 

There are all sorts of ways "top 10 percent" could be calculated, all sorts of different criteria it could be based on.

 

The same thing is true of calculating GPAs.  They're not really comparable w/o knowing how they were arrived at.  Different schools (or districts/states) use different grading scales.  For this reason, IIRC every college we visited with DS said they recalculate GPAs using their own criteria.

I've never heard of a statewide ranking for high school seniors.  What is it based on?  How would homeschooled kids be measured?

[Tap]

I've never heard of a statewide ranking for high school seniors.  What is it based on?  How would homeschooled kids be measured?

Unless a homeschooler was working under a private accredited program, or a public program for homeschoolers, I don't think they would be counted.