Class rank only reported in weighted GPA

Applying to College
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DS24 is trying to figure out what colleges would be good academic matches for him (challenging, but not crushing). He is looking at schools which have been test optional for decades, so it is difficult to know how his scores compare. His favorite schools have fewer than 30% of applicants submitting scores. As far as GPA, his high school reports the following for the class of 2022:

19% - 4.5+
24% - 4.0-4.49
27% - 3.5-3.99
12% - 3.0-3.49

This is weighted GPA, with an A+ in a weighted class receiving a 5.5. Many students add honors to their English and History classes freshman and sophomore year by writing an extra paper or two. That gives them four classes with a 5.5.
DS24 did not want to tack on honors. He’s not a fast reader or writer, and he felt unsure whether he would be able to earn an A in the regular class (he did).

His high school also has options to make band, orchestra, and chorus honors classes by writing a paper, which gives those kids another 5.5 class each year.

DS hasn’t taken any weighted classes until this year. Therefore, his GPA so far is an unweighted 3.7, which makes it look like he is in the bottom 50% of his class.

Will colleges count this as being in the bottom 50%? Or will they be aware of what’s going on with GPA weighting at his school? Thanks for any thoughts.

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If they take the high school’s reported class rank at face value, yes. This can be an issue if he is applying to Texas public universities, for example. Also, colleges that take the high school’s reported GPA at face value in comparison to the GPA ranges in the school profile would also be disadvantageous for him.

Seems like the high school set up a system where gaining 1.5 grade points for one or two extra papers is possible in some classes – a very good reward per effort ratio. But your student seems not to have taken advantage of this opportunity while others have.

Where his competitive disadvantage from not playing the extra-paper-for-1.5-grade-points game would be the least would be at colleges that recalculate GPA for their admission purposes and do not consider the high school’s reported class rank.

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His GPA is the bottom 50%, there is no way around that. Not wanting to challenge himself with honors led to this GPA, which is fine, as there are many schools out there that he can find for the level of challenge he prefers.
Does your HS have Naviance? Ours does, and our school also provides only Weighted GPA on the profile(and on naviance), to be used as a rough idea of rank, with a distribution listed as %s, like your school. Naviance for schools with lots of applications is the best way on ours to see where the kids with similar GPAs end up, and where they don’t get in: weighted GPA does tend to correlate fairly consistently with admissions, and more than scores even before test optional. The exceptions tend to be the opposite of your son: relatively lower wGPA but challenged themselves with maximum rigor (ie, the B/B+ in the AP class does seem to be better than the A in regular, at our school ). For example, our 3 “top” instate schools essentially do not take from the bottom half of the class unless it is a recruited athlete situation, BUT many other outstanding public and private schools readily take from the bottom half and even bottom 10% (JMU, USouthCarolina, Syracuse, Elon, CNU, and many more). If you do not have access to Naviance, set up a meeting with the college counseling staff to discuss what schools are typically “match” schools for your child’s GPA.

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The percentages that you are showing do not add up to 100%. Presumably there are another group of students who have less than a 3.0. If I just did the math right in my head, there are another 18% with less than a 3.0. If we assume that your son is just in the exact middle of the 3.5-3.99 range, then there might be something like 55% of the class ahead of him. However, if he starts doing the extra work now, he might move up a bit.

Colleges and universities will look at your son’s actual grades, as well as other factors such as recommendations.

I agree with talking to your school’s academic counselors. There should be plenty of universities and colleges that make sense for your son. I would be surprised if anything in the top 50 was appropriate, but there are hundreds of very good colleges and universities in the US (and more elsewhere).

What sort of high school is your son studying at?

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Yes, for certain schools his having chosen less rigorous classes would decrease his chances of acceptance. But for some excellent public U’s that don’t seem to emphasize rigor as much, he might have a better shot.

What does he want to study? Where does he want to study? Private, public, in-state, out of state, in-demand competitive major versus wide open major, needs fin aid or not, there are just way too many variables here to be able to give any relevant advice.

He chose to take mostly or all regular classes, and overall did well in them, with a B+ average. In my state, which has a good flagship state U, I’ve seen kids who took no honors or APs, did no significant ECs, but did well in regular classes, get admitted right off the bat with their high unweighted GPAs, whereas kids who always took the highest rigor classes, played varsity sports, headed student government all 4 yrs, but got B/B+ grades in those highest-rigor classes, and hence had a lower unweighted GPA, got wait-listed (although eventually admitted off the wait list). Seems that in some states, the state flagships reward high unweighted GPA with little rigor over lower unweighted GPA with highest rigor. I think that selective private schools which have more resources to do a “holistic” evaluation are better able to factor in rigor, which would go against him. So if you’re in a state where the flagship state U looks at unweighted GPA and doesn’t much consider rigor, that might be his best bet, if it’s a fit otherwise.

Does he have standardized test scores? Does he intend to submit them? In his case, a good standardized test score might help him, but honestly, if you say that he is not a fast reader or writer (so much so that he chose not to do untimed extra written work), I suspect that he would not/did not do well on the SAT or ACT, and so should not submit it.

Keep in mind that the goal is to choose the best college for him, that the family can afford, that helps him to achieve his educational and career goals. That may not be the most selective school that he might be able to get into. For a young man who didn’t want to challenge himself to do the extra work, or take the most rigorous classes, and who is not a fast reader or writer, the best match might be a 4 yr state college (as opposed to the flagship U), or a 3rd tier private college with small classes, lots of academic support, lots of individual attention. He would very likely be able to get into any of those schools, and in fact, the 3rd tier privates might offer him a lot of merit money. Take a look at the several threads in the past few years for B students seeking recommendations - lots of great info in those.

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Two different measures here, that both are in use by colleges:

a) Class Rank

19% + 24% = >43% ahead of him - so that puts him in the 5th decile (41-50%) - so basically an average student at his schools as far as grade.

“Rank” is commonly done based on weighted GPA, because it is the intention that an A student with all AP-else-honors classes should indeed rank higher, than someone getting A’s in “regular” classes.

b) GPA

As far as GPA, a number of colleges will look at the unweighted GPA, possibly the schools grading scheme (e.g., is an “A” a 4.0 or 4.3), and then recalculate their own weighted GPA using their own factors to arrive at a “normalized” value that betters suits assessing GPAs from different schools.

Here, your son’s unweighted GPA and rigor (which level of classes he attended) will factor.

All that theory aside… Overall, depending on the UW grading scale your son is apparently either a very solid “B” student, or possible an “A” student, which is a good achievement.

Selective colleges that do look for rigor would probably be a challenge, but otherwise, he looks to me to be a good candidate for very many good colleges that are quite happy to enroll, what evidently is a good student.

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3.7 unweighted or with no weighted grades is more like an unweighted A- average.

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It depends on the school. He’ll get into plenty just fine. And others will crush him based on lack of rigor.

Which schools is he looking at ?

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Thank you to everyone for your responses! I guess our real question is, do colleges know that certain high schools have a system which makes GPA more about how well you play the game, rather than rigor and grades?

My son took the same English and history classes as the kids who got the Honors designation. Honors is not a different class, it’s a designation added when the student writes an extra paper, or makes a presentation. This can also be done for classes like band and Latin. If you play your cards right, you can get a very high GPA without ever taking the hardest classes. For example, my D21 went to the same high school and finished with a 4.8 GPA, despite never taking Physics, Calculus, AP Bio or AP Chem.

To answer some questions in the thread, this is a public school in a high SES area with many parents who are laser-focused on prestigious college acceptances. We have Naviance, but the bulk of applications have gone to schools S24 is not looking at, so its not very helpful.

With S24, what you see is what you get. He knows that some kids did not read the books they wrote their honors papers on, but he would not consider skimming, or continuing to play an instrument he doesn’t love to boost his GPA.

As far as what schools he’s looking at, I think I’ll start a separate thread for that. None of them are in the top 50 National Universities, but his two reaches are between 40 and 50 on the Liberal Arts list. My thought from this thread is that he should consider adding a few more state schools. I will be hoping that it’s common to re-compute GPA rather than use the high school’s weighted GPA, and that colleges are wise to the fact that “Honors” means different things at different schools.

I appreciate all the insights.

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As an HS in an affluent area, there must be a School Profile. Would that clarify for an AO what you are saying about Honors and rank?

Not writing the extra paper to get the Honors designation does show that the student chose a less rigorous path, and that won’t help him at some schools. If he has taken many core courses, including bio, chem, physics and calculus, that will help him.

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Thanks, @Mwfan1921 . Yes, we have a School Profile. I had never looked at the second page which does describe some ways to get the honors designation such as, “9th grade students can earn honors credit with an independent research project.” Or, “The Honors Program requires students to read additional literature and produce a portfolio of work supervised by a mentor.” This definitely overstates what is actually going on, but I think colleges will know that Honors is a subjective area. In other subjective areas of his application, like recommendations and awards, it will be clear that S24 stands out in his own way.

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Yes, to some extent AOs who know the school well will know this. Our English and a couple other classes are similar: the honors designation is just a very large detailed paper. And, we have the situation where Honors and AP get the same 0.5 weight–and Honors (especially the ones with just one extra paper) are much easier than AP. When applying to college, kids are told that AOs look at the actual transcript compared to courses available (listed on the profile), and that taking the “hard” APs will be noticed, over similar GPA with a bunch of (easier) honors/AP/etc. We have one Honors foreign language that regularly gives A+ to essentially every kid in the class, for multiple years: the kids that pick that language have an easier path to higher GPAs, and it is well-known by AOs who see a lot of applications from the school. My kids didn’t take that language(language is picked well before HS), so we chose to shrug it off as out of our control.
Admission results at many colleges seems to validate this: true rigor is figured out by AOs and it counts.

However–doing even one extra paper is indeed “more rigor” that yours chose not to do, as @Mwfan1921 said. It really will depend on the rest of his transcript and how well the AOs know the details of his school. The bottom line is you probably need to meet with the school to get the details you are seeking.

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I think it’s worth asking the guidance counselor about how they classify rigor. If they are still giving highest rigor to kids doing these extra projects then your student may need to do the extra assignments if they want to be more competitive.

FWIW there was a lot of gaming of GPA in my D’s HS too but the guidance counselors were very stingy with the highest rigor designation.

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That’s a good idea for OP to ask the GC about how they classify rigor, and even if they do that. GCs at my local large suburban, ranked, affluent HS leave that area in the counselor Common app form blank (started that in the last decade or so when they stopped reporting rank and GPA deciles).

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I’m not sure what our guidance counselors do about rigor, but S24 is not looking to get the highest rigor box checked off. He was just surprised that even though he is a mostly A student with a few Bs, he is not even in the top 50% of his class, according to the only metric we can see. He wondered whether a college might think that he’s an underachiever or doesn’t love learning. (He’s used to people assuming this because he has severe dyslexia.)

I’m less worried now because I think there will be AO’s who look beyond the numbers. When they see that he can get an A in an AP class, they should be less concerned that he didn’t do honors projects freshman year. Certainly colleges can’t fill all their seats with kids who dotted every i and crossed every t, and never passed up the chance for more rigor.

I do think S24 should consider a few more very safe schools since it’s hard to know which schools would be academic matches. Thanks again for your responses. I realize that S24 is not your typical CC kid. I’ve thought about doing a journey thread about his search, but I’m not sure it would be helpful to very many other families. He’s not a CC “average excellent” student—he’s more like an average good student, with some other outstanding qualities.

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I think adding a few more safeties to the list is a good idea. I think a T40-T50 is going to be a high reach without both rigor and being in an upper decile for rank. There is a difference between a student getting an A in one or two AP classes, and one who is taking the most challenging classes offered, multiple APs/Honors and putting in extra work.

That said, there are so many great schools in the US that your student will undoubtedly have great acceptances. Just be sure to have a very well balanced list. It will all work out!

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Even though you have already started a thread about a year ago about college search in general for B students, I think that you should start another thread more specifically geared toward your own child. He will have lots of good options, even with a GPA that is at the 50th% for his class. If it were known what his interests are, I think that people should be able to give you some great ideas.

Highly selective colleges CAN fill their classes, many times over, with kids with very high stats. But there are many, many more schools that can provide an excellent education, and be the perfect fit for him, that are far less selective - those schools will most likely be delighted to take him, and with merit money, too. People with dyslexia often have very strong skills in other areas - mechanical, social, intuitive - and are often very successful in life, if they choose careers that don’t rely on fast, accurate reading and writing.

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I think our society and even the CC society can go off track a bit. Your son is an excellent student. Regardless of the classes he has taken. Nothing to be concerned with there. His counselor will talk about his severe dyslexia. College AOs will read about it and see he’s doing great. He could also have a low B or C avg but he doesn’t.

Friends kid just got into Tulane with similar profile EA… Not a unweighted 4.0 either with no scores sent since her scores are bad and had LD issues.

As stated once we know more about majors and schools your looking at I am sure everyone will have an opinion on helping with your list. All schools are looking for a mixed bag of kids to develop their class. Few schools want every kid to be the same. Getting mostly As… Well… There are lots of schools that would be thrilled to have a student like that. I would be more concerned with schools that support severe dyslexia and if he has a 504 /IEP accommodations that he needs to have to be the successful student that he currently is.

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Your kid sounds like an excellent kid, and most kids are not 4.0UW/5.0W GPAs with 1500 SATs and 20,000 activities and awards. Frankly, I think you would be doing a service to the College Confidential community and future lurkers who come here and see a post about a kid who is closer to what is “typical.” It can be very dispiriting for people with more “normal” stats to come here, and I am sure there are people who avoid posting because they feel they don’t fit the CC mold. The more stories we share about our “regular” kids, the better off I think everyone will be (including the “average excellent” kids who may be putting lots of pressure on themselves). Your kid’s still a junior, but I’m confident he will end up in a good place. People need to see that.

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Totally agree. People have no idea how many lurkers /non posters there are looking at all threads. Every story is a a learning experience.

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