Competition is a by-product of productive work, not its goal. A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.

Don't you think that reducing the value of an individual human being, be it adult or a child, is utter nonsense? As a manager, would you hire a college graduate with a grade average of 4.85 over the one with 4.65 without interviewing them both?

Some time back, I saw a commercial for Kia Sorento that addressed this issue. The dad in this commercial is my hero. It really surprised me that the networks even allowed the commercial to air, considering it was, in essence, an "anti participation trophy" ad. You can see it if you google "2016 Kia Sorento Built For Football Families Participation". If I had a commercial Hall Of Fame, this commercial would be solidly in.

So this is how snowflakes who require safe zones are created.

Good grief! What a crock! Why don't we just give them all participation awards and be done with it.

Some number of years ago a lady who is now about 40 was in the children's section of a science-fiction costume contest, as a 4-year-old. The judges decided to give all the children a prize. She said, "If everybody wins, that's the same as nobody wins."

Perhaps we should learn about life from the little children, who are actively involved in trying to make sense of it all, rather than from our old contemporaries, who often have simply given up.

Good question. Maybe anyone who is highly ranked in all the courses they elected to take would qualify for an all encompassing final final exam. Like a playoff in sports.
A healthy competition.

Depends on who is reading the results and their bias, and I mean this without political bias. That sounds better than not rewarding the one who took the more advanced course from the view of a college admission analyst, but the analyst also has the rest of the details on the courses. Do some schools still only give 4.0 as a top score?
One "number" is rarely a completely fair way to judge.
The student has to make a decision assuming he knows the rules: do I want the number to be the highest or do I want to take a class that is better for me?
In our class the top 5 students by score were guys, and the one of them ranked 3rd had won local honors with the highest SAT scores. The administration decided that he shouldn't be one of the 4 valedictorians because it wasn't fair to the 6th ranked girl... and he had already had enough honors in the view of the mediocre average-IQ administrators. So she replaced the student with the top SAT score, and at the time of graduation he also had the highest grade point average (Including all the advanced level courses available), while she had fallen to 7th behind 6 boys. So the top student by both methods of grading was excluded from the honor due to jealousy and bias by the school administration.
Last I heard she was working in a liberal college outside LA, California (how appropriate) and he had his own consulting business.

When will they start doing that on the college basketball teams so its fair to the short white guys?
Bench all those rapping athletes with the multiple pierced brain stems and amazing playing skills.
Don't you love the elitist's complete hypocrisy?

There is a problem with the ranking by GPA. My son's School gave 5's for As in advanced classes and 4's for A's in normal classes.

So if student a took 4 advanced classes and got an 'A' in all of them they would have a 5.0 average, if another student took the same 4 classes and also got an A in them, BUT also took a theater class or music, they would get a 4.8.

So, which student deserves the higher ranking?