<ul>
<li>If my child averages 95 across all her regular classes, her GPA is 3.5.</li>
<li>In honors/pre-AP/AP classes, averaging 95 gives her a 4.5 GPA.</li>
<li>High-achieving students must worry about every 6-weeks average point and semester test point, rather than just whether they got an A, B, or C.</li>
</ul>
<p>Is any other school district or private school worse? Thanks.</p>
<p>Apparently it’s too difficult for America to comprehend numbers (for the humor challenged) so we have to revert to Consumer Reports like ratings for our educational outcomes. </p>
<p>Elbonia (and the rest of the world) has survived using a simple numeric scale from 1 to 10 or 20 and 0.1 precision is sufficient to indicate the same outcome at the national level. </p>
<p>Maybe the rest of the world grades in metric :)</p>
<p>As for honors or AP/IB classes, in my view, the idea of extra points is ludicrous because at the end, a grade is indicative of how well the student did competing with the perfect student. If the class is HARDER, indicate so with an asterisk on the transcript and let the adcoms sort it out. It’[s not any different than student X taking all home-ed, gym, and shop classes and A’ing all of them versus student Y taking normal weight classes that are a bit more ‘serious’. Is an A in AP Human Geography (largely considered a no-brainer A in our HS) any harder than an A in normal weight Calc I?</p>
<p>I agree turbo, in my opinion course rigor should be demonstrated by the transcript, not the GPA. With these wacky weighting systems GPA on its own means almost nothing now. I wish my school had an unweighted GPA (all we get is weighted on our transcripts). Although for ranking purposes either W or UW could be used since there are pros and cons for each. Or, the school could simply provide W and UW GPA and rankings, and let the colleges sort it out.</p>
<p>Ouch, that stinks… I think my school has a weird way of doing GPA:</p>
<p>89.5-100% is a 4.0 UW or 4.5 W
79.5-89.5% is a 3.0 UW or 3.5 W
etc…</p>
<p>So you can’t tell if someone had a 98 or an 89.6, which is great if you’re a borderline student but not so good if you’re an outstanding student</p>
<p>None of these systems hurt the students directly, because adcoms look at your school profile when reviewing your record, and see your GPA in the context of how your school grades.</p>
<p>In our local schools, in a regular academic class, you need an A+ to get 4.0, a regular A is only 3.8. The additional weight for honors is +.4, and AP is +.8 (but lower than “academic” level gives you -.4 or -.8, and at least one required course (health) is graded at the general level, so an A+ in that class is worth 3.4</p>
<p>The idea of weighting came about to be able to compare students taking vastly different sets of courses - the idea being that the student with an unweighted 3.9 taking all Academic level classes is not superior to the unweighted 3.7 taking all honors and AP classes. But how much do you weight? And how do you keep your system from discouraging students from taking extra unweighted classes (that A+ in Band could drag down your weighted GPA).</p>
<p>To make matters worse, our local schools calculate the weighted GPA, and that is reported on the report cards and transcript, but the only actual use of the weighted GPA is to designate “Varsity Scholars” - those with 3.7 or better GPA after 7 or 8 semesters. Class rank is done using the unweighted GPA (a calculation the kids are never actually shown). Most often the Valedictorian is someone who has taken few AP classes, and sometimes few Honors classes as well, in favor of straight A’s in easier level classes.</p>
<p>As long as everyone in your school is ranked using the same system, you really don’t need to worry about it. It is no different than a school that has a seemingly inflated GPA system, until you realize their teachers grade harshly, with very few students earning any A’s.</p>
<p>So, 4KidsDad, that grading rewards kids who take the easier, non pre-AP/AP versions of classes.</p>
<p>A child with a 93 average across the board has a 4.0 GPA, no matter what classes they take. At my kid’s school, for a child with a 93 average to get a 4.0 GPA, 70 PERCENT of their high school classes would have to be pre-AP or AP. To get a 4.3 with a 97 average across the board, only 60% of their high school classes must be pre-AP or AP, so the trick is to get that 97 average…</p>
<p>How about totally unweighted grades with only A, B, C… (no + or -)? Class rank doesn’t consider difficulty of courses. However, easy to know unweighted gpa for college apps. There is a reason colleges will calculate their own gpa, but they don’t see the nuances. Either 90 or 93% for an A- I think the math dept was at odds with the percentage at one time.</p>
<p>Class rank is calculated using cumulative GPA. Honors classes get 3 points added to the final avg, AP classes 5 points. This means if someone gets a 90 in an honors class, it will boost them up to a 93. An A will be reported on the “unweighted” transcript even though it is technically weighted. I love this system.</p>
<p>CTScoutmom: You are reassuring, but I am still concerned. Where do adcoms in other states get the grading profile for the senior class at my child’s school? Thanks.</p>
<p>I can’t find that info on-line for any high school in my district, and I don’t see why an adcom would look at a relatively low GPA and research whether this is because of the school’s grading profile. Now if it’s a local high school or one that frequently applies to the college, the adcom might have a feeling as to what the lower-than-other-applicants GPA really means.</p>
<p>At our school, there are no + or - on semester grades, so a 90% and above is an A with no differentiation between kids with a 90% or those with 99% in a class. An “A” is 4.0, a “B” 3.0 and so on…Honors classes get extra .5 and AP, advanced or IB classes get a full extra point. Some classes (health, PE, some arts classes, first 2 years of languages, 9th grade world history) have to be taken at College Prep (4.0 max). Not sure what the actual maximum GPA would be, but many, many students end up with well above a 4.0. School only calculates/reports weighted GPA and does not rank students (not even by deciles). There is no identified Val or Sal (as far as I know…not sure if they report individually for scholarships). </p>
<p>The lack of pluses and minuses doesn’t distinguish between A- and A+ students but I do think it cuts down on grade grubbing for every point. For instance, my own D definetely prioritizes between her many time commitments and “settles” for some lower A’s when she is certainly capable of getting higher grades in at least some subjects. I can’t really blame her though since that is the way the system is incentivized.</p>
<p>I believe that the reason the school stopped ranking students was to try to mitigate the sense of cut throat competition between students and to encourage them to take arts classes and electives even though GPA might be slightly negatively affected. I think it has probably worked since all of the strongest students typically take art or music or theatre or other electives in addition to straight academic classes.</p>
Hawaiian, they get it from your kids’ school. When the school sends the Secondary School Report and transcript, they also send a document called a school profile. The profile includes a lot of information about the school, including but not limited to: grading scale, distribution of grades within the graduating class, honors or AP or other enriched classes offered and the percentage of students who take them, percentage of students who qualify for free or reduced-price meals. You can ask your kids’ guidance counselor to see their school’s profile.</p>
<p>But, yeah, that is a pretty lousy way of assigning grade points.</p>
<p>All courses were automatically honors weighted on a 4.0 scale.
97+ 4.5
93-96 4.0
89-92 3.5
And so on…
For APs, it was on a 5.0 scale? Not totally sure.
97+ 5.5
93-96 5.0
89-92 4.5 And so on…
In the district an 89-92 was a B+. I guess my school was competitive. A w gpa of 3.8 would have most likely placed you in the bottom half. </p>
<p>My school also does not differentiate between percentages. A 90-100 will always be an A. My school also recognizes people based on whether or not they take honors/AP classes. </p>
<p>However, my entire district calculates GPA strangely. Our weighted GPAs seem super-inflated. This is because we gain a certain amount of points added to our GPA for each honors/AP class that we take. There is no finite scale on our GPA. This allows for people to have high class rank by taking lots of online classes, even if they don’t have a 4.0 GPA. </p>
<p>Of course, there is also no difference between easy and hard classes besides the uninsightful regular/honors/AP distinction. I would not want the grade-grubbing percentage system, but I would rather have the weighted GPA system that caps out at 5.0.</p>
<p>My school district has decided not to weight ANY classes freshman year or any higher math course. So, even though I took five honors courses in freshman year, none of them were graded, and Honors Precalc and AP Calc AB this year are not weighted.
Other than that, my school weights things as:
Regular/electives- 4.0
Honors- 4.25
APs-5.0</p>
<p>Our school just gives percentage grades. If you get a 95 in English, that’s your grade: a 95. And while it’s generally acknowledged that a 95 is an A, letters grades aren’t shown on report cards or transcripts. The grade for the class is just recorded as a 95. Ten extra points are added for Pre-AP and AP classes, so some kids end up with “GPAs” of 100+. Our val last year was 107.something. </p>
<p>I’ve never understood the purpose of changing a percentage grade into a letter grade and then into 4.0 scale. (I’m sure there’s a good reason, I just don’t know what it is! ) Seems so much simpler to just go with the percentages… and a lot easier to figure out class rank that way, because there’s a lot fewer ties!</p>
<p>One apparently common problem occurs when weighted GPAs are used for class ranking purposes.</p>
<p>The problem is that if two students take the same schedule of all extra-weighted honors courses, except that one of them takes an additional non-honors course (e.g. band, orchestra, auto shop, etc.), and both get all A grades, the one with the additional non-honors course will have a worse weighted GPA.</p>
<p>Using weighted or scaled grade points instead of GPA for class rank purposes would avoid this problem.</p>
for the humor challenged) so we have to revert to Consumer Reports like ratings for our educational outcomes. </p>