DD’s high school doesn’t give a GPA boost for dual enrollment classes. In other words, DEs are strictly unweighted. Only honors classes and AP classes get the weighted booster. Is that typical? Dual Enrollment is college level, so it doesn’t make sense to me. I am hoping to get a sense of the logic behind the policy. What is your (or your student’s) high school policy on this?
It was class dependent at my daughter’s school. Some DE classes were considered honors level and others were not. That said, most were honors weighted.
Same here in our neck of the woods. DE gives no GPA boost, that’s why our GC recommended not transferring it to high school transcript, but keeping separate. I am ok with it 
Seems like a way for schools to encourage AP and honors classes in house over DE and keep all their funding. I’ve seen mixed reports on this in our area. I know some include them and some do not.
Our school district has a list of community college classes that are weighted higher. All of the classes are equivalent (in weighting) to similar AP classes at my daughter’s high school. For example, my daughter is taking Psych 1A this summer at the community college. Her school will weight the class the same as AP Psych.
My school didn’t, stupidly, imo. I can get some 100 level classes being easy but you can’t tell me that sophomore level mechanical engineering courses and 400 level physics is on the same level as regualar high school classes.
Its ok, I got 2+ years of transfer credit at my top choice college. (Also declined a waitlist at MIT, AOs are smart enough to recognize a rigorous course load when they see it regardless of the weighted GPA. My counselor did include a note on how the policy impacted my class rank in her letter.)
Our school recognizes dual enrollment as the same as AP except for courses that even when taken by college students don’t count as college credit such as low level math foundation classes. One difference though is at the college an A- was 90-92 and A was 93 and up whereas for high school an A- was 90-92, A 93-96 and A+ 97-100 so I guess that could affect gpa. Also there is no way to take a college class for high school credit and keep it off your high school transcript.
My daughter did two years of dual enrollment and is officially considered junior by the college she is starting at this fall and received excellent merit. However some are just free electives and probably won’t play a role in her graduation. She chose a small school honors program because she wanted small class sizes and professors not TAs teaching all classes.
Depends on the school. Eldest was in a program where all but 2 classes were dual enrollment and all her college classes were weighted as an honors class would be. My middle took a few classes at a local university but his high school did not weight them… though this school didn’t weight much in general.
Our schools count all honors, AP, IB, and dual enrollment classes as weighted the same. That’s true for community college classes and classes at the local UC campus.
A school’s actual reason for not weighting college classes may be financial. Perhaps if students are taking classes at a college instead of at the high school, the high school isn’t getting as much money. In other places, college classes are in addition to high school classes. Funding mechanisms differ widely, of course.
When D17 took a DE class, the course was not factored into her gpa at all. Now, with S19, he has a choice of having the grade (which is weighted) on his hs transcript and/or having it as college credit. Seems a bit odd.
Back in the day son was able to get summer gifted classes with their grades on his HS transcript. His district is all unweighted, only A, B… without + and -'s. Every HS/district does things differently. I find it so strange that here in Tampa (six years now) I read the val/sal news for the area and find gpa’s in the 7.-- or 5.-- depending on the HS. USF is aiming for a 4.0 as the minimum gpa. Contrast with UW where only unweighted grades, therefore with a max of 4.0 is used. Wish I could fine out the real, unweighted gpa’s around here.
Don’t worry about it. Colleges have ways of looking at how schools do things. It could have been annoying that son’s class rank was lower than it could have been, but then he could have had higher grades depending on the effort he put into things. I would go on the assumption that your kids get into the colleges they were meant to go to- the ones they were marginal for based on stats would not have admitted them over someone else because of how your HS does things. HS becomes ancient history once they’re in college anyhow (as does college once you hit grad programs or and the real world).
It can be more significant if colleges take high school weighted GPA at face value (e.g. Alabama and Georgia Tech) or heavily use class rank (Texas publics) than if they recalculate GPA to standardize comparisons or look at the record holistically.
D19’s school doesn’t weight AT ALL so we’re keeping her DE classes separate and just having the college send the transcript.
They don’t impact GPA at all at my daughter’s school. Only classes taken in the high school count. Even high school level taken in middle school don’t go on the transcript or factor into GPA.
@typiCAmom I’m not sure about other states, but in California, public high schools are REQUIRED to include dual enrollment classes from junior colleges, etc. on a high school transcript. Junior colleges always send a grade/transcript back to the student’s high school. I think your daughter’s guidance counselor was wrong about keeping dual enrollment grades “separate,” and if she she is encouraging your daughter to apply to colleges without her complete transcript, I would speak to her supervisor immediately. If your daughter applied to colleges and left any grades out - dual enrollment or otherwise - any possible college admissions could be rescinded.
Our school weights DE, Honors and AP the same. You only get college credit for the DE courses if you fork over money to the institution that was accrediting them, which would give you a college transcript, otherwise they just appeared on your high school transcript.
Ours weights them the same as an AP class. Interestingly our county schools weight +1 for honors and +2 for AP/DE. As a result, there are many students with greater than a 5.0 weighted GPA. I’ve been told that colleges take raw scores and weight them as they see fit, not as out school district calculates them.
I can see how it would affect class rank.
@vineyardview, thanks for the tip, I will talk to GC. Just to clarify, GC wasn’t suggesting we keep community college coursework hidden from colleges D will be applying to, she merely said we would be required to send separate transcripts (order them that is) from cc to schools she’d be applying to. Also, not sure if it matters, none of the classes D is taking via DE are used to satisfy HS requirements, they are either electives she is just interested in or trying to get a head start on classes that might possibly be accepted to satisfy GEs once she gets to college.
Re: #17, @typiCAmom
While UCs and CSUs accept college courses taken while in high school for transfer credit (within usual transfer credit rules), note that some private and out-of-state colleges limit the transfer credit for college courses taken while in high school. Depending on the college, there may be distinctions based on whether the course was used for high school requirements, or whether the class was held on the college versus high school campus, etc…
They don’t impact GPA at all at my daughter’s school. Only classes taken in the high school count. Even high school level taken in middle school don’t go on the transcript or factor into GPA.