Score (marks obtained) is a measure of absolute performance in examination while Rank is a measure of relative performance when compared to others. A student is interested in knowing how well he fared in the examination as compared to his peers. How can he know it? ‘Rank’ is the answer.
Rank only means a position of a student amongst the other students in the same group. 1st rank means that a student is a topper and none is ahead of him while 8th rank means that there are 7 other students who have scored more marks than him.
Example:-
|
Marks |
No. of students |
Rank |
|
100 |
18 |
1 |
|
99 |
10 |
19 |
|
98 |
1 |
29 |
|
97 |
1 |
30 |
A student scoring 100 marks gets 1st rank because he is a topper (even though there are other 17 students who are sharing the position with him). A student scoring 99 marks gets 19th rank which means that there are 18 students who scored more marks than him. The example above explains the ranking method.
Please note that here we are concerned with relative position only and rank is in no way means a comment on student’s performance. It neither overestimates the performance nor underestimates. In this example we can see that a student scoring 98 marks is intellectually at par with students scoring 99 marks, even at par with students scoring 100 marks but still his rank is 29th.
You may have observed that in the example above, rank no. 2 through rank 19 are missing and so from 20th to 28th.