This year, DGS is joining a long list of local schools that have eliminated class rank. With the elimination of class rank so too goes the top two percent. The change has been met with mixed reaction.

However, if you were to take a poll of student opinion the most popular opinion would most likely be none at all. The truth is that most students are not impacted by this change. Most students have much more important things to worry about than class rank.

But for the students that who hold a strong opinion of class rank, my question to you is why?

Why does a number—an imperfect one at that—mean so much to you. It’s completely fine and sensible to take pride in your academic achievements, but believing that a number indicated a sense of “betterness” over others is unhealthy, and as I’ll later explain, illogical.

Class rank was never meant to be a perfect system, but it has gotten to the point where the flaws outweigh any potential benefit. Simply put, GPA is not a very good way to measure success.

Students take varying classes, have different teachers and different circumstances. Two students with the same schedule could have different teachers with different grading policies. This will inevitably lead to an unfair outcome.

The biggest problem that resulted from class rank was wholly unintended—the gamification of GPA.

Some students who made it a goal to be in the top two percent made deliberate choices that were aimed towards maximizing GPA and nothing else. Students no longer would take the most interesting or challenging classes; instead, they had another motive: GPA.

The “game” is pretty simple. Take the most amount of honors classes while avoiding challenging ones, but it goes farther than that.

Are you a varsity athlete? If so you’re in luck. You don’t have to take gym and that GPA suddenly doesn’t have to take the small hit from an unweighted A. Play an instrument? Great, you can get your fine arts credit out of the way without having it impact your GPA.  

This strikes at the core of what school is supposed to be about. School is supposed to be a time of learning, exploration and growth. Class rank took this and replaced it with a stressful game played by a small group of students—many of whom saw their love of learning replaced with a crushing weight on their shoulders.

The main argument against the elimination of class rank also includes a critique of the elimination of the top two percent. Some hold the idea that without the top two percent students who otherwise would be recognized will be punished.

There are certainly some merits to this argument. Some students graduating this year did have a goal of being recognized for being part of this illustrious group.

However, for as unfair as class rank can be, the top two percent is even worse. Last year there were twelve students in the top two percent. Is the person that was 13th any less deserving than the person who was 12th?

Colleges have also moved away from using class rank in admission decisions as a student who may be in top 10 percent in one school might be in the top two percent in another.

The administration is still recognizing high achieving students by giving students who have a cumulative of GPA of 4.4 or higher a gold stole, gold cords and a gold tassel at graduation. While this is still an arbitrary cut-off, it does remove the pressure of competing against other students.

A full list of the changes to student recognition at graduation can be found here.

The school took a step in the right direction by removing a needless source of stress for a small group of students that are already juggling so much.