Hello all,
For college students:
Does your college provide your class rank as part of your grade report?
Mine does not, and I am wondering why.
A high GPA is nice, but does not mean much without the class rank, IMO.
Is a college required to provide class rank? I suppose not, since they can set their own policies.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Yes.
no but i wish they did
Nope, they only supply the median grade.
RD,
Interesting. Does the median grade appear on your grade report, or did you have to ask for it?
My rank appears on my transcript, but only for the engineering school. If you think about it it doesn't make sense to compare people across all different majors
No and I'm glad they didn't.
There are two issues with providing class rank.
First, everyone has a different program of study. Should you be compared to people with different majors? With transfer students? With people who took more credits than they needed to graduate? With people who finished part time?
Second, it can be the kiss of death to people at the bottom of the class, which may or may not be appropriate. It's a bigger problem at really top schools, where almost everyone is competent and hardworking.
Our provides quintile. I think decile would be more appropriate, but whatever.
In my original post I should have been more specific in stating that I was only looking for my class rank within my major, not in the college overall. As some of you pointed out, that would be meaningless.
The only real reasons I can come up with for not giving students their class rank are:
1) It may be demoralizing to weaker students. (Too bad.)
2) It hides the grade inflation that exists at many schools, probably including mine.
But it is a lot like finishing a race and knowing your time, but not your place. You have somewhat of an idea how you fared, but not the full picture.
I suppose in today's society, the little league mentality of "everyone wins" has spilled over into college and grading. Don't want anyone feeling badly by letting them know how they are really doing in school. Better to withhold the information, so students (and more importantly the parents who are paying) can convince themselves they are doing better in school than they actually are.
No, and to my knowledge the only people who find out are the salutatorian and valedictorian, a few days before graduation.
As a 4.0 college student I always felt like there was no reward for being at the top of the class. My college degree is worth exactly the same as the college degree of 2.5 frat boy who bragged about how he didn't study for the test and got a C. Post college now it seems like I put in a lot of effort for nothing because no one truly cares what your GPA was in the real working world.
However, another caveat to why they don't do class ranks is how would you determine who was actually in what class. If I'm a couple classes ahead should I be counted with the class above me or the class I started with? Would you only get a ranking with the people you actually graduate with?
Ranking based off of percentile would be a more plausible rank. For example, 1% of students in the major historically graduate with a 4.0 or something along those lines.
If they do it is not easily found
You mean like 3/10?
