How Becoming Parallel Students Can Change Your Future

   Parallel rank is a rank that is created to sort students from highest to lowest levels based on their total grades and averages in their academic performance at the end of each semester.
Usually, a homeroom teacher will sum up and average his all homeroom students first. Then the teacher will share and discuss about them with other teachers so they will know who are among the top ten and who are in the last ranks. Students will know their positions in parallel rank after the counseling teacher tell them. The purpose of this parallel rank is actually to motivate students to study harder and to measure how effective is the learning process. However, many students think negative of it. They are apathetic to this parallel rank system because they think it is a kind of discrimination to those students who have low academic grades. Teachers will give special treatments only to top ten parallel rank students such as giving more attention and extra value while on the other side ordinary students will not get that special treatments. Although many students don’t care about their grades and parallel rank, some students would die hard to get in the top ten parallel rank, because they can be famous students in the school, have a greater opportunity  to enter state university without taking the entrance test and want to prove something to some people.

   Who does not want to be famous in Senior High School? Almost everyone answered no. Being famous is one of the spiritual needs that need to be met. For some students who want to be famous but have no special expertise such as not being good at sports or music, or being passive in the school organization, so getting in the top ten parallel rank is the right way to solve it. Teachers and friends will always talk about students who are in the top 10 parallel rank because they are considered to have above-average intelligence than others. Their intelligence will make them as exemplary students in the school that will make them famous. In addition, teachers will give them the privilege to join academic competitions such as the nationwide olympics of students, debate, scientific work competitions etc. From joining the competitions, they can get a lot of experience, prizes, trophies or medals that could make them even more famous in school.

   Almost every senior high school students` dream after graduation is to enter their favorite state universities. Basically the state university entrance system is divided into three: the invitation line (without taking the entrance test), the written entrance test line and independent test line. Many students will work very hard to get the first choice because they do not want to bother themselves in preparing for a written test or an independent-test. This non-written line is called SNMPTN (Indonesian acronym of Seleksi Nasional Masuk Perguruan Tinggi Negeri or National Selection of State Universities). Starting from 2016, the quota of SNMPTN in state university is reduced to 40% of the initial 60% of the total seats available. In addition, only 75% of the total students per class can participate in the selection of SNMPTN determined based on the parallel rank.  For example, if there are 100 students in the school, only 75 of them are able to participate in the selection of SNMPTN. Due to these factors, students who are in the top ten parallel rank have a greater opportunity to get accepted in state universities. This is because the university will give priority to the top ten students to get accepted. University trust their prospective students’ ability based on grades and parallel rank. They do not want to accept prospective students whose  track records are  not clearly known yet

   Students who were underestimated by their friends because of having poor economic background or being disable usually have high motivation in themselves to study. The same thing happens with minority students who have different religion, ethnicity, race and skin color. One of the ways to prove that they can do as well as other students or even can do better is to get into the parallel rank.

   In summary, there are three reasons why some students would die hard to get in the top ten parallel ranks such as they can be famous in the school, have a greater opportunity to enter state university without taking the entrance test and want to prove something to some people. Many students even consider it as something weird and do not want to become friends with them. However, as wise students we should interpret it as positive thing because these students can motivate ourselves to study.  As a proverb says “If you make friends with perfume seller, your clothes will smells good. If you make friends with students who are keen to learn, then you will be keen to learn too”.

By : M. Dwiki Rivaldy