For high-achievers in high school, the title of valedictorian is the ultimate achievement. It’s the culmination of years of hard work and competition against fellow students, and it’s traditionally awarded to only a single student in an entire grade. It’s a massive honor and looks very good on college applications.

However, the practice of assigning class ranks is harmful to high school students.

Class ranks are ranked based on GPA scores, which depend on the grades a student receives in their classes. This may seem like an objective scale at first, a balanced way to determine which students are more academically motivated, but it doesn’t consider a multitude of other factors such as the variation in grading by different teachers or outside influences such as virtual learning days.

The main incentive for getting a high class rank is so that you look more desirable to colleges. It provides a way for colleges to see how well you score in your classes overall and how you compare to your fellow students. The issue is that decimal point differences in a student’s GPA could cause them to look unfavorable to colleges based on class rank alone. Valedictorian may look much more impressive than salutatorian, but there’s probably only a hundredth of a point difference in their GPAs.

While the desire to achieve a high class rank may push those at the top of the academic leaderboard to work harder, it only demotivates the many other students who know they don’t have a chance to achieve such a distinction. It fosters unhealthy competition against fellow students instead of creating a collaborative environment where students can help support each other.

Assigning class ranks is especially harmful to the mental health of top students, as they sacrifice sleep and enjoyment in favor of decimal point differences to their GPAs. High school is meant to be a time for teenagers to discover their passions and explore their interests, but many instead trade classes they are interested in for classes that may benefit their GPAs, denying themselves happiness in fear that it will impact their GPA.

The unnecessary competition that class ranks cause creates a hostile environment for students where everyone is only looking out for themselves.

In an effort to discourage these overly competitive attitudes while still giving distinctions to high-achievers, many high schools have begun changing the honors system. Some are switching the ranking system from class ranks to the Latin Honors format, where high-achieving students are sorted into three levels of honors so that a group of students can be honored instead of just the valedictorian and salutatorian. Other high schools are trying methods such as naming multiple co-valedictorians or eliminating class ranks altogether.

The practice of assigning class ranks to graduating high school seniors has been around for a long time. As many higher education institutions stop requiring class ranks, hopefully, high schools will stop assigning class ranks.