<p>I'm wondering what parents with kids in college have found, in terms of correlation between success in HS and success in college. I know that some college admissions offices recompute HS GPA to remove the "fluff" and other colleges accept the GPA as computed by the HS. But once the kid actually starts college, and you look at the relationship between HS grades and college grades, are you finding that a recomputed HS GPA (based only on academic solids, without a bump for AP/honors) would have been a more valid predictor of grades in college?</p>
<p>When the grade in a HS course includes a significant chunk of credit for compliance with homework, does that also water down its value as a predictor of college grades? When I was in college, in the non-lab courses, our grades were based mostly on a midterm, a paper, and a final. Choking on one of the tests, or being lazy about the paper, would do far greater harm to one's final grade than it would have in HS, if your HS teacher gave credit for homework compliance and added little quizzes, things that could bolster the overall grade for the type of kid who made good use of that stuff.</p>
<p>Are grades in the first year of college still largely based upon the midterm-paper-final format, even at the colleges at the lower end of the academic spectrum (state directionals)? Or are those colleges now making it more like HS, especially in the 100 level classes?</p>
<p>I'm principally curious about the lower end of the academic totem pole here -- the kids who finish a hard, competitive public HS with a 2.8 or so, and go to state directionals. But any feedback would be of interest. Thanks.</p>
Having attended a very rigorous college I believe “compliance with homework” is actually a GOOD predictor of college grades. It also helped my DDs in college.</p>
<p>This is something I’ve been thinking about as well. My 9th grader has a very hard time with studying. She’ll make flash cards, she’ll repeat the info out loud, I’ll quiz her … and often, it just doesn’t stick with her. Her grades are okay precisely because of what the OP says - homework, quizzes, projects, extra credit. And I know that won’t be the case forever - really, not even all the way through high school. So it’s been bothering me that she could get into a college and then be totally unprepared because it’s a very different grading system than she is experiencing now.</p>
<p>I have been thinking about this topic lately. D2 went to an LAC ranked in the #40s by USNWR. She gets credit for class attendance in many classes, has multiple smaller papers and quizzes, and also bigger papers and tests. Compared to the research university I went to for undergrad where it was midterm/final (in a class like Calculus), and that was it for your grade. Or 3-4 signficant papers for the whole semester’s grade in an English class. I think she has it easy. But she has taken full advantage of it, and has a very high college GPA.</p>
<p>It seems to me this might be a numbers game. The LAC has smaller class sizes. The teacher has time to grade more assignments, keep track of who is coming to class, etc. That is just not going to happen at a bigger university, regardless of whether it is a highly ranked university or a state directional if the class sizes are large. </p>
<p>I am curious about higher ranked LACs, though. At at top 10 LAC, is it midterm/final for a grade? Or are there a lot more opportunities to make (or break) your grade during a semester, like at D2’s LAC?</p>
<p>My top 1% kid made Dean’s List first term freshman year at Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science, but he fell off the wagon after that. I have no idea what his ultimate rank was, but he didn’t get any prizes or honors at graduation. It’s all good though - he has his dream job. </p>
<p>My top 6% kid at Tufts grades are slightly lower than in high school - he was a B+/A- student. Now he’s a B+/B student. His GPA has been hugely impacted by being in a major that requires taking a foreign language to fluency (generally 8 semesters). Arabic is really a struggle for him, and has impacted his grades in other courses too.</p>
<p>For younger son there have been more projects and more group projects than I would have expected as opposed the midterm, paper, exam routine.</p>
<p>For older son computer assignments are a big part of the grade (expected I’d seen that with friends when I was in college), lab grades were not always what he expected and seemed arbitrary to him.</p>
<p>We really looked into this aspect when my youngest son and I were looking at colleges for him. He did very well on projects but tended to freeze up on the big tests in HS. We specifically asked how knowledge was assessed at each college once we realized it’s importance. He chose his college knowing that they tend to grade more on projects and papers then on scantron type tests. His GPA for his freshman year at College is 3.8.</p>
<p>Interesting. Erin’s Dad, are you saying that your daughter’s college graded her on homework, or simply that good homework habits helped to prepare her for the midterm and final? Where did the college fall on the academic totem pole? When I was in college, we had to assign ourselves our own homework – using our own judgment about what we needed to do to be ready for the midterm and final. </p>
<p>Kathiep and her son were smart when looking at colleges to consider how the college would grade. Although I guess this might vary among majors, or professors, even within a college. Kathiep, if you looked at different types of schools, did any trends emerge among the types?</p>
<p>We seem to be hearing more from academically competitive schools so far. It makes sense that the LACs could personalize the process more, with the professor doing more grading throughout the semester, and the net result that the grade does not rest too heavily on a few (three or four) component scores. Does anybody know the prevailing grading trends at the state directionals?</p>
<p>At Williams, D has papers (often once a week smaller ones with larger ones twice a semester), mid-terms, and finals for each class which are graded and multiplicity of tests, quizzes, and papers vary from class to class but it is always more that a mid-term or final. Certainly homework is preparation for tests or papers and is not graded. Class participation is sometimes included in the grade and doing readings to participate is expected. It’s a lot of work and only for the disciplined. </p>
<p>As for grades, both of my kids are at about .2 to .3 below their unweighted GPA’s. D at a LAC and S at a large flagship U. AP class value for my kids was to help them learn to study for college level work.</p>
<p>I don’t think the college GPA can be predicted with much accuracy. There are too many variables. The same kid could receive widely ranging grades depending on the major and courses taken. For example - if the kid decides to pursue a humanities major the GPA may be high but if the exact same kid decided to pursue computer science at the same college the GPA might be lower and I’m referring to a student with aptitude in both areas. Some colleges indicate the average GPA and it’s often a half point or more lower in the engineering/CS majors despite those majors requiring an even higher academic qualification to be admitted to them in the first place vs some other majors.</p>
<p>Another variable is in the college itself and whatever grading regimen they happen to follow. Some courses may be graded on fairly strict curves and some people will definitely be in the top, middle, and bottom.</p>
<p>Also don’t forget that once in college the strata of the students’ capabilities changes - i.e. at a highly selective college they’re skimming just the top 10%, 5%, 1% or whatever of the HS students so some of those students who are used to being in the top 10% will now be in the bottom 10%. This can be a problem for students who managed to skate through HS without developing really good study skills once they hit college and realize the level of work and difficulty has ratcheted up.</p>
<p>Based on what I know from my two college age boys and their friends:</p>
<p>Very few surprises, if you look objectively at what they actually did in high school, not just at their high school GPAs.</p>
<p>For the most part, regardless of what colleges they ended up attending, high school and college grades have had a high correlation. SAT and ACT scores have not been indicative of anything once they get to college.</p>
<p>The exceptions to this generality have been:</p>
<p>A couple of very smart kids who did a minimum amount of work in HS, but managed to pull off pretty good grades, bombed in college because they had not developed the work habits or study skills they needed for college level work. These are the kids whose friends could have predicted this, but whose parents, heads buried firmly in the sand, were shocked.</p>
<p>A couple of kids who had very mediocre high school grades have done very well in college because they are attending highly structured colleges (one is at The Citidel, one is a member of a military-like corps at a larger university). The structure of the school setting has been the key in not allowing them to fail if they put forth the effort. These kids WANTED to attend these schools, they seemed to understand at some deep level that they needed external structure. Their parents did NOT “send” them there to “fix” anything.</p>
<p>A couple of kids have found themselves working very hard for B’s and C’c at very tippy top universities. It has been a shock to those kids who were always at the top of the class to be average now. Not a bad thing, but an adjustment for them.</p>
<p>OP, sorry I wasn’t clear. HW in college is not graded but graded HW in HS provided a good habit for keeping up with college work. They both attend(ed) top 75 LACs (one is finished now). I was one of those who found it easy to keep up in HS but bombed in college because I didn’t know how to really study.</p>
<p>My D1’s experience at Haverford is very similar. There’s a midterm and a final in every class but also numerous papers (some long, some short), quizzes, graded projects and presentations, graded lab assignments, sometimes graded class participation. Mostly, it’s just a lot of work at a rigorous level with very high expectations, and it requires focus, discipline, excellent study skills, writing ability, and strong time management skills to pull it all off. </p>
<p>Hard to say if there’s a correlation between HS grades and college grades; probably not so much. D1 is doing very well in college as she did in HS, but she knows lots of kids who were academic stars in very highly regarded high schools who pretty much bombed in their freshman year of college. Partly it just requires more self-discipline and better time management skills; in HS pretty much everything is spoon fed and as long as you do the assignments and turn everything in on time, you’re golden. College offers more independence and some kids don’t handle that well, or it may just take them some time to find their footing.</p>
<p>I know parents like me (of kids with 2.8 gpas and no honors) are in short supply here on CC – but can anybody share grading experiences at the kind of state directionals that a kid like that might end up attending?</p>
<p>Interesting. I went to Duke in the 80’s and two tests and a paper or two were standard. I teach at our state flagship now and do many short papers, and projects, in addition to three big tests. I don’t do it to help their grades–it’s a way to make sure they are learning what I want them to learn, and they can produce in different media…</p>
<p>I don’t want to get halfway through the semester and realize I wasn’t teaching very effectively.</p>
<p>Well, I don’t think we can make a blanket statement regarding how a 2.8 GPA student would do, because there are all sorts of reasons why that student has that grade.</p>
<p>Just as some of the pevious posters said, some kids do better in college and some of us, who did well in High School, didn’t get as high a GPA in college. There is certainly a potential for a less than 4.0 student to get ‘good’ grades in their college major, because hopefully it is a subject they have a passion and aptitude for. The high school math may have been a struggle for the creative writing major (and vice versa).</p>
<p>But I have to agree with the previous poster: I think the best predictor of not flunking out of college (and I certainly don’t think a 2.8 GPA is ‘flunking out’!) is TIME MANAGEMENT SKILLS. And a big part of that is having the habit of doing the work, whether that means reading 100 pages/week for Psych 100 or doing your math homework every night in high school.</p>
<p>In 9th grade, my daughter’s math teacher didn’t grade the homework or quizzes of the students. Guess which kids ended up with the A’s in that class? The ones who put in the effort and did the homework anyway. </p>
<p>There will always be kids who have huge imaginations and can write wonderful essays but who have a hard time memorizing all the presidents for U.S. History. There wil always be kids who do just enough to ‘get by’ and 3 tests/semester will leave little room for error. And even if our bright kids go to a nothing special state university, like I did, they will be in a bigger pond, swimming with some kids who flunk out of most classes and ones whose amazing brain power simply blows the curve out of the water every time.</p>
<p>Since we’re starting to look at our freshman class and prep for orientation, I’ll answer.</p>
<p>Generally, a student’s GPA will be a little lower than is it was in HS. There are always surprises, however. Someone who made it in by the skin of his teeth will shine. Someone who looks good on paper will fall. THey are, however, the exceptions. Some years there are more exceptions than others. </p>
<p>We look at both a test score and a hs GPA. High test scores and high grades don’t make any eyebrows raise. Those kids don’t get a closer look. A low test score/high GPA will trigger a look at the transcript. Lower ACT with rigorous courses often means hard worker. Kids who know how to work will be fine. Kids who have a transcript full of “fluff” are probably going to have grades more in line with the ACT. </p>
<p>Low GPA/high test is another matter. Might be LD. Might be the kid wasn’t into “homework compliance”. Not being willing to do homework or see it’s value is going to be a killer in college, even if grades are based only on tests (and that does really depend on the class). See, you HAVE to do the homework in college, even if it’s never turned in or graded. You have to read, do the problem sets, whatever. It’s called studying, and if you don’t do it, your test grades will more than likely suffer.</p>
<p>Another data point: D had a weighted GPA of 3.8 in high school - but it felt like I pushed, pulled, and nagged her to death to get there.</p>
<p>She will graduate from college with a 3.95 GPA (one B in the past four years) in a pretty rigorous major. Completely self-driven. Somewhere, somehow a switch was flipped and she took off.</p>
<p>Oh, and her classes have run the gamut: some were midterm/final/paper, but most were papers/midterm/final/lots of presentations. Little if any credit for attendance or homework.</p>
<p>Many posters are noting – understandably – that good homework habits undergird good grades on tests and papers. But there are some kids who routinely get full credit for each homework assignment, and routinely get Cs on tests and papers. This will produce Bs on the report card in HS, but is a more likely predictor of Cs (or worse) in college, no? Clearly in that case, whatever good the homework is doing to prepare the kid for the major assessments, it’s only going so far; the kid has trouble performing on the major assessments.</p>
<p>If you have another kid who studies well enough to get Bs on major assessments, but with HS grades that are dragged down a bit by forgetting to hand in homework, that kid’s grades might actually be better in a situation (college) where studying matters as preparation for the exam, period. Of course, when you are not organized enough to hand in your homework, doesn’t that bode ill in college for other reasons – time management and executive function being central to one’s success in college?</p>
<p>At Wellesley, most of my classes have counted homework (problem sets) and/ or class participation as part of my grade. It’s not uncommon for a class to have two or even three midterms before the final, or a “short paper” and a “long paper.”</p>
<p>I transfered from a top-100 university to Wellesley. My classes at that school were similar to Wellesley’s in the sense that there were typically homework and/or class participation grades. I ended up taking a different class than the one that thad two midterms and a final, where the professor counted the best 2 exam scores. </p>
<p>So depending on the school it’s entirely possible for one’s grade to be considered on more than a midterm assessment and a final.</p>
<p>Of my kids, one attended a top-10 lac and another a top private uni (not ivy). Both had lots and lots of papers. As far as I know, homework and class participation hasn’t ‘counted’ for points at either-- but preparation is expected. In general, there were far fewer quizzes than high school. Frankly, their college grades have no correlation to high school grades, to study habits or to difficulty of coursework.</p>
But she has taken full advantage of it, and has a very high college GPA.</p>