Best School subjects

PE wins 61% of its duels and tops the School ranking ahead of Music, which sits at #2 with 1234 ELO points.

A 47-point ELO gap separates PE from Music at the top, the sharpest divide in the ranking and a testament to the enduring appeal of physical education over other middle school subjects. The physical education class edges past creative and academic disciplines by a clear margin, holding 1281 ELO points after 173 duels. Music follows with a 50% win rate across 198 matchups. History sits at #4 with 1232 points and maintains a 58% win rate despite trailing the top three by a single point. English/Language Arts claims #3 at 1233 ELO, while Technology rounds out the top 5 at 1226 points. The tight clustering from #2 through #5 shows how narrow the margins are, with all four subjects separated by just 8 ELO points.

The bottom tells a different story about what resonates least with former students. Spanish / German lands in last place at 1125 ELO after 195 duels, while Physics/Chemistry ranks #11 with a 40% win rate across 183 matchups. Foreign Language sits just above at #10 with 1141 points, suggesting that language studies struggle to capture the same nostalgic pull as gym class or music lessons. This ranking draws from 2893 duels submitted by 90 players across 12 contenders, updated on 11 October 2026. Head to the School TopList and cast your vote for the middle school subject that left the strongest mark on you.

Updated on October 11, 2026

How this ranking is computed

Every duel won lifts a contender and every loss drops them, by an amount that depends on the opponent's strength: beating the leader is worth more than beating the last. It is an ELO, the same principle as in chess. Duels are not drawn at random — an adaptive entropy sort puts the least predictable match-ups first, which settles the ranking far faster than a full round robin. A worldwide ranking is only published past 30 completed plays. Known limit: a contender who has faced few opponents keeps an approximate score, and the bottom of the table moves more than the podium.

How our rankings are made →