Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sorry - PP here; found the article below.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/education/3153047/equity-grading-fairfax-county-family-search-class-rank/

I don't buy this. Colleges want to know student rank to gauge performance compared to direct peers. I don't think FCPS publishes rank to the students. But I would put on money on rank being on the 'official' transcript that goes to colleges.

Rank is not on the official transcript that goes to colleges.

They send a high school profile to colleges. It will include data on what GPA the top 5, 10, 15… percent have.

Consider this from the perspective of a college admissions officer, who receives thousands of application and among them are those from TJ, Langley, or McLean. Colleges understand that they receive limited information from high schools regarding class ranking, and when they receive hundreds of applications from each of those top ranked high schools schools, they are faced with the challenge of selecting just a few dozen applicants to extend offers to. As a result, they have had no choice but to develop their own criteria to identify the top ten percent of applicants. In this process, particular attention is paid to the coursework, especially the most rigorous courses. College admissions officers know that a TJ student who has taken coursework three levels beyond the minimum required AP Calculus AB, like Discrete Mathematics is almost certainly in the top ten percent of their high school. This entire equity diversity proposition that just the TJ label is good enough, even with Cs and Ds, to gain admission into a reasonable college is a bogus promo. If the student is an equity admit, colleges know how to spot them. All said, why would a college admit a student that has a subpar high school gpa into a competitive STEM major with even more challenging coursework?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sorry - PP here; found the article below.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/education/3153047/equity-grading-fairfax-county-family-search-class-rank/

I don't buy this. Colleges want to know student rank to gauge performance compared to direct peers. I don't think FCPS publishes rank to the students. But I would put on money on rank being on the 'official' transcript that goes to colleges.

Rank is not on the official transcript that goes to colleges.

They send a high school profile to colleges. It will include data on what GPA the top 5, 10, 15… percent have.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Could be the difference in class rank

If your kid is in AAP, then they won't be getting a class rank in high school

High school doesn't have AAP and I think there is ranking. Kids figure it out by knowing other kids' GPA but the school puts the rank on the official transcript sent to the colleges.

If your kid is in AAP, they go to FCPS and FCPS does not rank.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sorry - PP here; found the article below.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/education/3153047/equity-grading-fairfax-county-family-search-class-rank/

I don't buy this. Colleges want to know student rank to gauge performance compared to direct peers. I don't think FCPS publishes rank to the students. But I would put on money on rank being on the 'official' transcript that goes to colleges.

TJ hasn't had rank since it started in the 80s. We all saw what they showed colleges - top GPA and bottom GPA and a GPA distribution for the class and that was it. They meant it when they said they didn't rank (unlike some area privates which will apparently wink-wink, nudge-nudge provide rank information to colleges despite saying they don't).

I have a co-worker who was admitted and refused to attend for one of the earliest TJ classes over the lack of ranking, because at the time there was no TJ reputation and they were afraid it would hurt college admissions.

I believe you will find many anecdotal stories like your coworker, yourself, or the mom on the Examiner story. What I'm saying is when a college or university asks for rank, a rank is provided; otherwise, you're seriously impacting the school's student body in the application process. I don't think any high school in FCPS would do that and it would be really hard to keep under wraps for this long. I think FCPS will never provide it to the student/family, but that's very different than not providing colleges and universities with that data. If the school is producing a distribution (i.e., top 1%, top 5%, etc), they also have each student's rank on that curve.

And, as noted by the mom in the Examiner story, there are many scholarships where rank plays a critical factor. What the story doesn't go into is whether FCPS provided that information to the scholarship program directly via the official transcript, which I am betting it did. They just didn't want to give it to the family/student and hence the ire of the mom and the rail against FCPS.

You can submit a FERPA request to FCPS for any transcript sent on your child's behalf to colleges. Why would they lie when the lie will obviously be exposed?

A FERPA or FOIA request doesn't release a 'sealed' transcript. These laws are not so open. A litigation would ... so if you aren't planning to litigate the issue, getting the rank isn't as easy as you all seem to think.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sorry - PP here; found the article below.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/education/3153047/equity-grading-fairfax-county-family-search-class-rank/

I don't buy this. Colleges want to know student rank to gauge performance compared to direct peers. I don't think FCPS publishes rank to the students. But I would put on money on rank being on the 'official' transcript that goes to colleges.

The county can't be cute or lie because they never know when a student will request to see what has been sent to colleges either through a request to the county or to the college after they enroll. Saying no class rank and then supplying it seems like a pointless scandal

Have you ever tried requesting your kid's packet that is submitted to a college after enrolling? Give it a shot and you'll see. FOIAs don't work for everything, contrary to public belief.

There is absolutely no good reason to do this.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sorry - PP here; found the article below.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/education/3153047/equity-grading-fairfax-county-family-search-class-rank/

I don't buy this. Colleges want to know student rank to gauge performance compared to direct peers. I don't think FCPS publishes rank to the students. But I would put on money on rank being on the 'official' transcript that goes to colleges.

TJ hasn't had rank since it started in the 80s. We all saw what they showed colleges - top GPA and bottom GPA and a GPA distribution for the class and that was it. They meant it when they said they didn't rank (unlike some area privates which will apparently wink-wink, nudge-nudge provide rank information to colleges despite saying they don't).

I have a co-worker who was admitted and refused to attend for one of the earliest TJ classes over the lack of ranking, because at the time there was no TJ reputation and they were afraid it would hurt college admissions.

I believe you will find many anecdotal stories like your coworker, yourself, or the mom on the Examiner story. What I'm saying is when a college or university asks for rank, a rank is provided; otherwise, you're seriously impacting the school's student body in the application process. I don't think any high school in FCPS would do that and it would be really hard to keep under wraps for this long. I think FCPS will never provide it to the student/family, but that's very different than not providing colleges and universities with that data. If the school is producing a distribution (i.e., top 1%, top 5%, etc), they also have each student's rank on that curve.

And, as noted by the mom in the Examiner story, there are many scholarships where rank plays a critical factor. What the story doesn't go into is whether FCPS provided that information to the scholarship program directly via the official transcript, which I am betting it did. They just didn't want to give it to the family/student and hence the ire of the mom and the rail against FCPS.

You can submit a FERPA request to FCPS for any transcript sent on your child's behalf to colleges. Why would they lie when the lie will obviously be exposed?