I think you're correct, Bostonian. I've concluded that there pretty much IS no system that can't be gamed, no stat that can't be goosed somehow. Not really.
Cookie, this is the exact thinking that led DD to that number one spot. We had no idea what her class rank was until the school counselor offered us the info (#2 and then #3) when she grade-skipped again from 9th to 11th. That really hurt her chances, truthfully-- because she jumped from a class where she was one of just two very clear favorites to one in which there were about 5 elite performing students. I'm not the only parent who noted that about her graduating class, incidentally-- the top 5 in her group were truly an amazing bunch of kids.
Still-- it was definitely not a reason not to skip. Never even crossed our minds until later that it might have an impact. We were thinking about things the way that Cookie is.
Those AP courses were the best preparation for college-- not in terms of level, necessarily, and definitely not in terms of pacing-- but in terms of the workload and time management. As a radically accelerated student, that was the set of domains that she most needed development in prior to post-secondary, so a fuller-than-typical schedule
and AP coursework jammed with continuous assignments/expectations was ideal.
