Hi guys,
I’m an international student, a sophomore, who is concerned about my GPA trend (downwardish)…
Our school is new, so the system always changes. The board is trying to follow what the rigorous boarding schools do, so that the academics are “difficult” and good grades are hard to earn. I don’t oppose against those ideas, but due to these changes, I’m quite struggling.
You might think that it’s too early / weird for a sophomore to be concerned with the GPA trend, as I’ve only gone through the first quarter. However, the school is trying to decrease its average GPA day by day… which ultimately means that my GPA will go downwards from now on. My assumption about the school’s intention should be correct, because the tests/projects didn’t get more difficult (it did, but it should get moderately harder grade by grade), the system just changed. The system had a 5-point grading system before, but now, we have 4 point grading system, leading for the “proficient/average letter grade” to be a C, not a B.
In the first semester of freshman year, i had 4.00 unweighted GPA with 2 honors classes. (4.125 for weighted)
In the second semester, I had two subjects A-, so the weighted GPA was 4.07— something.
We don’t have class ranking, but I was informed by a teacher that I had the highest GPA within the whole school. (We didn’t have seniors btw).
Right now, as I’m ending Quarter 1, my grade got significantly lower. I have a B- (Physical Education- like this doesn’t make sense), one B+, one A-, and the rest all As. We had A+s before, but that grade is now out of new our system. I’m not sure what my GPA will be, but it’s an inevitable truth that it will get significantly lower. However, I believe that if I’m compared to other students in my grade, I’ll still be one of the highest.
== You can skip this part ==
Having B- in PE class… I never expected it. All other students (girls) have B,B-,C+, or C. My health condition is bad due to a severe illness in the past, so I understand that I’m not the “best” at PE. I believe several boys got As or A-s, which is unfair, because while they may have a better physical ability than us, that should not be the case. The teacher even announced that most of our grades will be based on our skills, not our efforts. I cannot oppose to the evaluation criteria, but the B- hurts A LOT.
For other B+ and A-, it was not that I did poorly on my tests (I did poorly on one, but it should not have affected that much).
The thing that I’m most worried about is the colleges’ views about my trend. Maybe I should not have worked hard in freshman year. The effort I put in increased, but due to the school system’s change, the grade is going down and down. We don’t even have class ranking/percentage, which means that the universities won’t be able to compare my grade to others. This is a huge disadvantage, because as a newborn school, the universities won’t be able to recognize our trend as well as the change of system. They will just look at my grades just the way they are.
My only hope is that the universities will recognize the change of school grading system. The sudden change will also hurt other students.
As a sophomore, I have the ability to move to another school, or I might just stay here.
Will this downward trend significantly affect my chance to get into my dream universities? Do other schools inform the university about their change of systems??
Thank you, please reply. (It’s quite long, sorry, you can just read the last part).