(66)Application files are piled highly this month in colleges across the
country. (67) Admissions officers are poring essays and recommendation
letters, scouring transcripts and standardized test scores.
(68) But anything is missing from many applications: a class ranking,
once a major component in admissions decisions. In the
cat-and-mouse maneuvering over admission to prestigious colleges and
universities, (69) thousands of high schools have simply stopped providing
that information, concluding it could harm the chances of their very better,
but not best, students. (70) Canny college
officials, in turn have found a tactical way to response. (71) Using
broad data that high schools often provide, like a distribution of grade
averages for entire senior class, they essentially recreate an applicant’s class
rank. (72) The process has left them
exasperating. (73) "If we’re looking at your son or
daughter and you want us to know that they are among the best in their school
with a rank we don’t necessarily know," said Jim Buck, dean of admissions
and financial aid at Swarthmore College. (74) Admissions
directors say strategy can backfire. When high schools do not provide enough
general information to recreate the class rank calculation, (75) many
admissions directors say they have little choice and to do something virtually
no one wants them to do: give more weight to scores on the SAT and other
standardized exams.