True, and it doesn’t seem to be a part of the reference type either, so can’t change it in preferences either I guess. I rarely enter records, manually, so I never noticed that. Sorry. But when you create a new record, the cursor at least starts out in the Author field and not the rating field (both in a new record and in an established record).
How many other users have a problem with the rating option at the top of an open record. Vote here!