<p>I had assumed that taking more advanced classes would look better for college. I'm a junior now and I have taken about 14 Honors classes throughout my high school career, two of which are APs. Compared to regular courses in my school, a B in an advanced class (AP or Honors) is a 4.0, an A is a 5.0, and there is no distinction between reported unweighted and weighted GPA. While I do well in math and science courses, I get mainly B's in english, history, and foreign languages. In all, I managed about a 4.4 in this system.
I thought that having Bs on my report card would be fine as long as they were in Honors classes, but I recently found out that some colleges recalculate GPA despite course level. Now I have a ton of Bs in my grade history that will drag down my GPA. Should I be worried and level down into easier classes next year? Or do more advanced classes fare better in the admissions process that a higher GPA? I'm fairly certain that I enjoy the more advanced classes over the regular ones, but if they are ultimately detrimental to my college admissions success, are they worthwhile?</p>
<p>I don’t know about others, but from what I see, GPA trumps advanced classes by a lot at our school where we do not do weighted GPA nor class ranking. Maybe it is more important for the very competitive colleges where all the kids who apply there are pretty much straight As student. Otherwise, I think an A on lower class is better than a B or lower in higher level class.</p>
<p>To a certain extent, yes they might help, but overloading yourself with AP classes is Absolutely NOT going to help at all unless you can pull straight A’s in them. In highschool, I took 11 AP classes, all of which were the most challenging and demanding AP classes offered by my school. I ended up doing fairly well with a rank of 17/552 and a 4.28 weighted/ 3.78 unweighted with no C’s. After seeing the results of my other classmates getting into colleges who take easier classes, I can seriously conclude that they had no impact whatsoever. People who take all the “easy” AP classes and regular classes ended up getting straight A’s and easily getting into the top colleges where as many of my friends who sacrificed a lot of their time and effort on the hardest AP classes got rejected. You should definetly still push yourself to take AP classes but you should also limit yourself to the maximum amount you think you can personally handle</p>
<p>OP,
I once had a discussion with the head of admissions for a top 20, and at the time she said that the school recomputed applicants’ gpas on a 4.0 scale and included only academic classes in the calculation; and that they then also assigned a value to the rigor of the curriculum pursued by the applicant, and that the two scores together by whatever formula were how they considered the academic portion of the application. So taking a tougher curriculum without a perfect outcome doesn’t necessarily help or hurt you any more than if you had taken a less rigorous curriculum with a slightly higher outcome.</p>
<p>Obviously…they all say the best package includes the rigorous curriculum with the top grades.</p>
<p>There are too many applicants with top grades and top course rigor to the top 20 schools to think you can get by with anything less. You are not likely to be successful missing either but high grades without the most advanced coursework is just not going to cut it. If you are not able to take advantage of all your high school has to offer, why should a competitive university open its vast resources to you when most any college will offer that student adequate post-graduate challenge?</p>
<p>^I think you miss OP point a little bit. For top students, yes I agree, but for the next wave of good students, is it good to have most difficult classes and course load and end up getting a number of Bs which adversely lowered GPA or pick some hard and some not so hard and end up getting much better GPA? I think I agree with OP that the latter is the better way to go if you want to maximize your chance at the most competitive schools that you can plausibly get in. At least that is what I have seen anecdotally at our school, a manageable course load that results in high GPA is a much better way to go.</p>
<p>There are plenty of kids at our schools every year getting into the top 20 without the most difficult course load. One or two easier classes let them have more time and spend more effort on the more difficult ones. Sometimes they even get into better schools than those kids that take the most difficult classes.</p>
<p>I agree with ttparent. Its not worth taking the very hardest schedule if it will adversely affect your entire GPA. My daughter, a junior, took too hard a schedule this year and really suffered with it. If she had taken one less AP it still would have been a challenging schedule, however, she would have had better grades across the board. I think its most important to take the advance classes in your academic areas of stregnth. For example, if you are applying as an engineering major, don’t take regular Physics because its easier than AP physics.</p>
<p>Difficult classes look better at every college. Bs in APs will definitely get you further than As in lower level classes. Many mid range colleges don’t even consider kids who didn’t take
Harder classes.</p>
<p>Waverly, from my experience, I disagree. I see plenty of kids that took lower level classes and no AP or very few APs and got into better schools than my kids who took all possible AP classes at our school but has slightly lower GPA. Sometimes, you can’t even tell which are the lower level classes but kids know which classes are easier and which teachers are easier and the not so diligent kids all flock to those classes. My kids refuse to take those classes because it is very boring and unchalleging. I understand there are many other factors like ECs, but in general, blanket statement like they don’t even consider kids who didn’t take harder classes is simply untrue.</p>
<p>100 % agree with ttparent…for example, look at the Umich thread for the last 5 years…kids w all honors and AP’s but not all A’s got shut out…alot…</p>
<p>totally depends on the college list; and that is a difficult assessment prior to freshman year in high school to figure out…</p>
<p>The OP is already a junior; my advice; find colleges that prioritize rigor or re-weight your GPA adding back points for the honors and AP’s; they do exist…</p>
<p>I’ve been on both sides-I’ve been a college admissions officer and a high school college counselor. I would agree there are a few state schools that simply go on GPA without a close look at rigor. But there are also state systems where rigor is a must (UC). But at private colleges, my kids with rigor have always done best by far.</p>
<p>Waverly- although many colleges do prioritize rigor and would rather see Bs in APs than As in regular classes, I know a girl who rarely takes honors classes and got into Brown, so there are definitely exceptions.</p>
<p>What did this girl have that Brown really wanted?</p>