What does GPA rank mean?

[Elliephant]

I go to school in Canada. We don't rank undergrads by their GPA, so I'm not sure exactly what such a ranking entails at American schools: Are students ranked across their entire year? their faculty? their programme? just their major? Please enlighten my northern brain

[anotheruser]

At my school, they order the GPA's of each member of a class (year). So, for example, a student with a 3.2 GPA might be ranked somewhere around the top 30th or 40th percentile; one with a 1.7 GPA would probably be ranked in the top 90th percentile.

I wish they did it across majors rather than years, as at my liberal arts college the very popular humanities programs suffer huge grade inflation. Very few students with quant majors are in the top 10%. Of course, at an liberal arts college as small as ours some majors have fewer than 10 students.

Not that it really matters all too much, I'm just a bit competitive

[rthunder27]

I've never seen undergrads ranked by GPA at a US school. Closest thing I've seen are honors bestowed on a certain top percentage of the class, which at PSU was by college, as in top x% in College of Engineering gets Highest distinction, across all types of engineering.