Hi. I transferred schools after my sophomore year. My old school did not calculate weighted GPA or do class rank, and classes could be only normal or remedial. The school district’s policy was that every class was ‘Honors’ level (except for the remedial ones obviously). This means my transcript only had ‘Algebra II’ instead of ‘Honors Algebra II’. At my new school, classes can be general, enriched, honors, or AP, and every class above general is on the 5.0 scale. This school does calculate class weighted GPA and class rank, and mine is now extremely low because all the classes that I took my freshmen and sophomore year are general, and on the 4.0 scale (unless they were AP). My class rank is far lower than most of my peers. I’ve taken more AP classes than anyone at the school, and never taken anything but the hardest level of class, and I’m ranked 30th out of a class of 230. This doesn’t seem too bad, but 1) I now live in Louisiana, so it won’t look good to colleges that I can’t even get in the top 10% of the class at a school ranked 1318th in the nation and 2) if the classes that should be coded as honors were coded as such (like Algebra, Chemistry and academic courses - I’m not trying to get PE on the 5.0 scale or anything unreasonable) I would be in the top 5 of my class. I’m trying to get into top schools like Princeton and Yale, and I’m worried this will jeopardize that hope. My counselor/new school is adamant that they can’t change the classes to honors, so I’m stuck. How will this low class rank affect my ability to get into schools like Princeton or Yale?
It won’t.
Colleges review transcripts withing context. Your GC can explain on the Secondary School Report how it integrated your previous courses into the GPA.
This EXACT situation happened to me. I moved after my freshman year, and my GPA went from a 4.9/5.0 to a 4.01. I was ranked very, very low in my class due to discrepancies in the grading and GPA calculations.
My course of action was to take over a dozen online classes to boost my GPA. I ended up being valedictorian. However, hindsight is 20/20, and knowing what I know now about how transcripts are reviewed (meaning that the schools you apply to will review both transcripts in the context of each school’s grading system), what I did was likely unnecessary. The same thing happened to two other students I know. They did not take online classes to boost their GPA / class rank, and they ended up at Princeton and Cornell, respectively.
I understand where you’re coming from with your fears; I was shooting for the same schools, and spent way, way too much time stressing over this. For your own peace of mind, your counselor can include a note about your GPA (or you can add your own note in the additional info section of the Common App).
Good luck!
Just to point out what works at one school does not work at all. My own HS dis not count any courses in the GPA not taken at the HS. Many others count them all as unweighted.
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That puts your high school in the top 5% in the US.
The good news is that your class rank won’t matter much because many colleges recalculate each applicant’s GPA based on their own formula and criteria to equalize GPAs among the thousands of high schools. The bad news is that those colleges probably aren’t going to count your freshman year as honors level classes either. The good news is that if you are Princeton or Yale material, the AOs are going to know it when they see it on your application regardless of your freshman year.