If you’re a high schooler, you’ve more than likely heard of class rank. If you’re a high schooler planning on attending college, class rank is constantly in the back of your mind as you go through the four years of school. Will you be number one or number 400 in your class? Will your dream school deny you all because of where you lie on that number line?

Jennifer Clark, BHS’ school counseling department head, doesn’t want rank to be a problem anymore.

“We found that class rank and where you place within the school was putting a great deal of stress on the students,” said Clark. “It just wasn’t healthy.”

That’s why if seniors log onto Naviance this year to find their class rank, they’re met by a decile percentage. This system groups students into 10 equal groups, showing if you’re the top 10 percent, 20 percent, 30 percent and so on, of your class.

This plan to change the rank system–which first started in 2007–was proposed last fall to the School Committee meeting. The School Counseling department did hours of countless research, talking to families, high schools and colleges to find that class rank just wasn’t that important anymore.

“We researched a variety of colleges and found that less and less value was put on rank, and because of this many high schools have been eliminating class rank altogether,” said Clark. She went on, “We even directly talked to parents and students, and having this system just didn’t seem to make sense anymore.”

Clark explained that when class rank is completely taken away or changed to the decile system, it makes colleges look harder at the whole student when reviewing their application. Maybe someone’s not at the top of their class, but there could be many other great qualities that student possesses that could be easily overlooked when their rank comes into play.

Another factor that was considered when deciding to change the rank system was that she and the rest of the counselors wanted students to take classes that were interesting and beneficial for their future and growth as individuals.

“We want them to take interesting courses to meet their needs and interests, not just to get the AP credit and bump up the GPA,” said Clark. “Students who worked just as hard as each other and got great grades could still fall at extremely different numbers on the rank. It just comes down to tiny decimal points.”

She and the rest of the administrators don’t want students to compare their ranks and feel disappointed at the results, even when they’ve worked hard over the past four years. Rank was harming students in many different ways, and it was time to make a change.

“We discussed completely eliminating rank altogether, but we figured the decile system would still allow there to be a certain comparison for colleges,” said Clark.

As colleges begin to focus more on the student as a whole, more and more high schools will eliminate class rank from their school systems.

“Maybe in the future we’ll completely eliminate rank, but we thought this was a great first step,” said Clark.

While current students find themselves still being compared to each other in the end, only time will tell if the future students of BHS have a completely different high school experience.