Class rank is here to stay in Loudoun County.

Class ranking—the practice of, before a graduating class’s senior year, arranging students in descending order by their GPAs—has been a practice of Loudoun County for decades. The rankings are sent to colleges, and titles such as ‘valedictorian’ and ‘salutatorian’ are awarded based on that ordering to the class’s top two graduates.

Most school systems in the Northern Virginia area, including Fairfax County, no longer publish class rank. These decisions fall in line with a recent publication by the National Association for College Admission Counseling in Alexandria, VA, which concludes that “class rank doesn’t get students anything” but instead “undercuts students in the best schools, giving an advantage in college admissions to students with higher rankings from less demanding schools.”

Fairfax County, among the most competitive school districts in the nation, has chosen not to rank its students for fear of disadvantaging them in the college admissions process. So why does Loudoun continue to rank its students?

“It’s one more piece to assess a student’s academic performance,” says Jaclyn Smith, head of the counseling department at Dominion. “I don’t know how it started, but it’s been a practice of LCPS for many years.”

However, Smith does not believe ranking students has the detrimental effect on Dominion students cited by Fairfax County as the reason behind removing class rank. “For the vast majority of students, there isn’t a positive or negative effect,” Smith says. “Most students don’t apply to extremely competitive colleges, like the Ivies. Those schools are the only ones who might truly be looking to see who’s in the top X percent of the class or who’s the valedictorian.”

In fact, Smith contends that the comparison between students provides college a more candid picture of the student’s achievement. “Grades are more important than GPA for most schools,” Smith said. “However, class rank might help a school distinguish between an A/B student in Loudoun County and an A/B student in another county.”