When class ranks come out in February and June at Edmonds-Woodway High School, counseling coordinator Sharon Johnson’s office gets busy.
“When the ranks are out, everyone runs around,” said Johnson, who tells students their rank when they come in to ask. “They do ask who’s down the line (from them), but I don’t tell them.”
The school uses a weighted ranking system that rewards students for taking tough courses, including International Baccalaureate (IB) and Advanced Placement (AP).
Only one student can be No. 1 in their class, from freshman to senior. And everyone, down to the lowest-ranked, has a number.
Some students forget their number a week later, but for others it spurs intense competition.
“They take pride in it and sometimes it becomes obsessive,” said Edmonds-Woodway principal Alan Weiss. “Let’s say you’re No. 1 in the fall of your senior year and I’m No. 2 – that creates a lot of incentive for me to work really hard.”
The competition for top spots is especially fierce because Edmonds-Woodway is a high achieving school. Fifty-three of 437 seniors and 89 of 427 juniors are in the challenging IB program. Students take rigorous courses and IB exams and earn a special diploma. The program is at Edmonds-Woodway but open to all district high school students. Many other students also take AP and honors courses.
IB students talk about rank a lot, said Lauren Nielson, the No. 1-ranked senior. They try to guess who ranks where, and everyone knows the top 10.
“Teenagers are competitive, especially IB students,” Nielson said. “It’s part of the IB mind set.”
Personality and parents motivated Nielson to take so many hard courses, she said, but the ranking system played a big role, too. She decided as a freshman she wanted to be No. 1.
“It matters a lot to me,” Nielson said. “High school would have been a lot easier if I didn’t care about rank.”
Students ask their counselor for their rank, and other student’s numbers are not shared, but word gets around. The top 10 seniors are announced at year’s end.
For a long time, Nielson was No. 2 with Steven Guo at No. 1, she said. Nielson trailed by as much as 0.05 grade points out of 70.
“I was finally able to bump him out,” said Nielson, who climbed to No. 1 at the end of her junior year.
She takes mostly IB classes, and this year, took six. Altogether, high school was an immense amount of work.
The stress of class work and extracurricular activities took a toll on her health last year. “I’ve become very sleep deprived,” Nielson said.
Now that she’s won the honor, the pressure to keep the top spot is off.
“I’m very relieved because it’s been really stressful and I’ve been occupied with that a lot,” Nielson said.
The competition created by a ranking system can be healthy, she said.
“If it’s organized and there aren’t any bad feelings toward rivals,” she said. “I respect the people in the top 10 and I’ve never resented them. I was motivated by my goal of being No. 1 and competition helped all of us.”
Rank helps students have tangible goals, rather than just the general goal to do well, she added.
Many students take the rankings less seriously, said Nick Neiman, outgoing ASB president.
“It really depends if (students are) academically based or extra-curricular based,” he said.
Twice a year, students find out their rank and say things like, “I slipped out of the top 10 percent,” or “I’m No. 200,” Neiman said.
“It’s not like something really serious,” said Neiman, a junior. He’s No. 40, in the top 10 percent of his class, he said.
For many students, No. 1 is out of reach because of the advanced classes needed to get there, Neiman said. Still, he thinks students try harder with the reward of rank .
A friend of Neiman’s at Ballard High School in Seattle is one of about 15 No. 1’s in her class, he said.
“I’m like, ‘Oh, you share it with 14 other people, that must be cool,’” Neiman said with a touch of sarcasm.
Edmonds-Woodway’s weighted ranking system, which narrows the top spot to one, supplanted one based on grade-point average about 11 years ago, principal Weiss said.
It was Weiss’ first or second year at the school, which until then had almost no advanced courses, he said. The IB program was just starting, and there needed to be an incentive for students to take those classes, Weiss said.
“The secret of success is you set high expectations for kids and give them good direction – they will meet that standard,” said Weiss.
With the old system, Johnson said, students could take underwater basket weaving six periods a day for four years, get all A’s and be at the top of their class.
These days, the top 10 Edmonds-Woodway students are honored at a year-end banquet, they sit up front at graduation and they wear a special medallion on their graduation gown.
The buzz among some students about rank has only come back to Nielson in a good way, she said.
“The only thing people have said to me directly is, ‘Congratulations,’” she said.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
