With the end of senior year coming up for the class of 2025, many students have begun to wonder if they are going to be placed within the top ten of the class. However, unfortunately, those questions won’t be answered this year, as Morgan will continue its policy, put into place around 2022-2023, of not publishing class rank.
Currently, the valedictorian and salutatorian have known their positions in the class since the end of the first semester after grades had closed. They are the only people in the class of ‘25 to know their rank, the top ten percent won’t be known until near the end of the school year. At the Morgan school, they let the top two of the class know their rank, but when it comes to the top ten, they aren’t ranked anymore. They are given the information that they are in the top ten, but not the exact placement.
This is why:
The Morgan school, along with many other schools in the state, have decided to get rid of ranking the top ten of the class.
“We were hearing more and more from colleges and secondary options mentioning how they didn’t want to look at rank as a factor; they weren’t really looking at them at all,” said counselor Mrs. Zdunczyk.
Additionally, the staff began to notice that while this was happening, there were more anxieties and frustrations over rank, more students hyper-focusing on competing against one another and focusing only on grades, instead of the matter of learning.
“The downside was that some students and families weren’t used to this change and didn’t understand the benefits of doing away with it, so there was a bit of push back. So there were some issues last year. This year, it has been remarkably beneficial,” said Mrs. Zdunczyk.
This year, for Morgan, there are still a valedictorian and a salutatorian, and we still have the top ten percent. That top five percent gets acknowledged by a different program outside the school, Morgan Scholars.
What is class rank? Why could it be important?:
Class rank in high school is a comparison of students’ academic achievements compared to their peers in their class. The way that this information is found out is the GPA of all students in the class is calculated, and then put in order of highest to lowest. For example, a student at Morgan could be at the top of the class with a 4.3 GPA, and the lowest in the class could be a 2.8.
The reason it matters is the way colleges view it. Many colleges, especially Ivy League, would consider accepting the top two of the class, knowing that the students are able to keep their high GPA in high school.
When determining GPA at the Morgan School, guidance has it weighted instead of unweighted. Weighted GPA just helps to give more credit to advanced courses like honors, AP or ECE. This is also what can help give students at Morgan a bit of advantage with GPA. For an example, say that a student took a couple ECE classes plus an AP course and a few honors classes. In those classes, if the student is doing well and having an “A” in every class, this grade gets bumped to an “A+” because they are taking a more challenge course. This is helping give the student more weight to their GPA. Every year the class can also be different and ranging with smaller or larger amounts of students. This year, the senior class is ranked out of 122 students.
A Student’s Opinion On The Matter:
In a video made by a student last year, Dillon Moore, he argued about why his GPA mattered. He had seen that there were issues with how his GPA had been handled last year. He had taken leadership on this issue and met with the Board of Education many times, counselors, and administration.
“I learned that I was ranked with a 4.5903 GPA. I worked hard and had great grades my first semester. Then on January 30, the other two students and I were called down individually to guidance. I was told that I was dropped to number three. My GPA was now a 4.5703, I was upset but also confused because it just didn’t add up.” He mentioned in his video.
He had taken many advanced courses, and was confused as to why his GPA would drop. Then came to the conclusion that his GPA and others were calculated wrong. In the video, he mentions that he was in a three-way tie with the other seniors. So it was also difficult to make the full decision and weigh in what student actually made the top two of the class. Moore had wanted to stay in the top two because he would be offered the scholarship for UCONN which is where he had planned to go.
The problems he had seen were how the GPA was calculated at the Morgan school. How a student was given three study halls instead of one. Also, how he noticed a student was taking a college course outside of school, and they were given that opportunity while others didn’t know about it.
All Moore was asking for was to recalculate the GPA of the top three students by using academic classes from Morgan, correcting special exceptions for three study halls, and no extra grades from outside programs.
“On September 12th there was no way I could hold on to number two, but they allowed me to think I could anyway. And on this day, They have already decided to tell students their rank at the end of junior year. Giving them one last semester to try to improve it, creates too much competition, anxieties, etc… They already decided that this would be the last time they did it. And this is how they handled it?”
This is how Moore finished off his speech in the video, also including how people could help him reach out more and show how his opinion mattered.
