I saw an article in my high school alumni newsletter recently that announced that the school would be doing away with class rank from now on. The school board voted that due to a decline in importance in college admission decisions (the National Assocation for College Admission Counseling reported that half of all high schools do not report rank), Evanston Township High School (ETHS to you in the know) will just provide the highest weighted and unweighted GPA of the year's graduating class on the school profile that accompanies each student's college application. This, according to the article, will "lessen the students' stress about rank, over which they have no control," and free them to explore courses that interest them rather than those that will affect their GPA.

That's nice. Seriously. I wish this had been decided when I was in high school.

My first memory of class rank takes place not at school but at summer camp. A handful of my friends and I were counselors at Camp Echo in Michigan, and somebody heard from her parents that the class ranks had been announced. Already, I had a bit of a struggle as a counselor at camp; life was much easier when you were just a camper and followed the whims of camp administration. As a counselor, however, not only was I in charge of actual kids (which was not as easy as I had assumed), there was a whole new level of cliqueishness going on. There were relationships and secret parties and trysts and an alternate social world and I didn't like that what used to be a semi-innocent summer getaway was now an enhanced version of high school, with brand new ways to feel uncool. Then, add on top of that, the news of the ranking. It already gave me a complex to look at a grade school friend of mine and see that she was totally kicking my ass in the popularity/boys division, but now I also had official word that she was better than I was at school. It was kind of a bummer of a summer and I never camp-counseled again.

After that, my main memory of class rank was my parents telling me that it would be really cool of me if I could manage to graduate in the top 20 of my class of 600+. (They used language other than this). And you know what? I did. It was right under the wire; I think I squeaked in at #18, #19, or #20, but I did it, and it was kind of a big deal (not to brag) because I was one of the few students in the top 20 who weren't in the accelerated chemistry/physics program.

Two things remain a mystery to me: how I managed to achieve this accomplishment when it truly wasn't within my control (see: other students and their crazy achievements.) And also, how my parents tricked me into actually listening to them. There are tons of kids who have parents who demand the best from their kids and push them to do their hardest but some the kids revolt, and revolt hard. I barely revolted and when I did, revolted light. I live in fear that my son will one day be one of those kids who has to go to a military academy because his parents pushed him too hard and he ends up like that girl in Traffic.

I have a theory, one not backed up by research or evidence at all, that there will be a trend in about ten years or so where parents start to lighten up on the whole helicopter parent thing. There is, obviously, a big difference between expecting your children to do their best and to give them the support they can (which is what my parents did) and hovering and throwing money down for unfair advantages and demanding special treatment the way many parents do. My parents pushed me hard and sprung for advantages like test-prep classes, but they also let me experience my share of bumps and failures and didn't instill in me a sense that I was more special or deserved better than anybody else in the school.

I see three reasons for my hypothetical future trend:

a.) Fewer young parents will be willing or able to spend money on the type of get-ahead methods deployed by many wealthy parents (like private college counselors or the money for tutors or multiple college applications or SAT-takings.)

b.) After having been parented by O.G. helicopter parents, newer parents may decide that a fast-track to Harvard or whatever may not actually be a key to financial, much less emotional success.

c.) Amongst white, liberal, urban parents, anyway, it will start to look and feel distasteful to push their already-privileged children to the front of the line.

I may be wrong. It may just get more intense and we'll start seeing parents giving their two-year-olds Adderall so they can stay up late cramming for their preschool exams. But regardless of whether or not the competition tide really ebbs, it's certainly not a bad thing for high school kids to have one fewer reason to feel less-than their classmates.