HOLLIS — Hollis/Brookline High School at the end of this year is ending the practice of measuring students by class rank.

The top 10 students of the graduating class of 2013 will recognized this year, and seniors will be able to request that their class ranking be sent to colleges.

Next year's graduating class will recognize the valedictorian and salutatorian, but the remaining top 10 students will be recognized alphabetically instead of by rank, according to Cynthia Matte, principal of Hollis Brookline High School. Class rank will not be sent to colleges or appear on student transcripts.

“It's absolutely a good thing for the graduates,” Matte said.

Hollis Brookline is a high-performing school, Matte said. The average GPA is 3.15, meaning that even a student with a 3.0 GPA can receive what appears to be a lower ranking.

Under the new policy, colleges will receive the student's information, GPA, and a profile containing a distribution chart illustrating the number of students achieving a certain grade-average within the school, Matte said.

While researching the issue, it became apparent that colleges are becoming less interested in class rank, favoring a more holistic view of the student including SAT scores, overall grades and course rigor, Matte said “It certainly is something that's diminishing,” Matte said.

Less than 50 percent of schools nationally report student ranking, Matte said. Bedford High School, Souhegan High School in Amherst, and Bishop Guertin in Nashua are a few of the local schools that have abandoned the practice.

A survey of more than 40 colleges showed that class rank has declined in importance as a factor in the college admittance process over the past decade. Rank may do a disservice to students from schools where the mean GPA is high or GPA scores are tightly clustered, school officials said.

Two public forums for Hollis Brookline were held to get community input. Once the data were presented, community response was overwhelmingly in favor of eliminating class rank, Matte said.

The Hollis Brookline Cooperative School Board approved the new policy on Oct.17. It was a tough decision for most board members, according to School Board Chairman Tom Solon. The board received a lot of public input, he said.

“Clearly there was a desire to change from a system that reportedly hurts a majority of our students,” Solon said.

The public raised concerns that while there is a strong potential for class rank to hurt students in a high-achieving school like Hollis Brookline in some cases, the absence of a rank could hurt an applicant's chances on some scholarship applications or be used as a reason for elimination from consideration.

Most opposition to the change was over the proposal of removing the option to report class rank in cases where it might help, Solon said. The question of whether it's the school place to dictate what will or will not be reported also came up, he said.

A compromise was reached by allowing the current class to request their rank be reported on transcripts. The board also asked that records be kept on how many seniors make the request. After reviewing the data, the policy can be adjusted if necessary, Solon said.

“I'm comfortable that the process was appropriate,” Solon said.

jhanson@newstote.com