<p>How do your schools count GPA if a HS student takes a course with a local college? </p>
<p>My D. is planning to take one or two college courses in her senior year. They'll be online courses that her school doesn't offer, from a community college. She has won a scholarship so she can pay for these courses with it. We wonder if a college course she takes with the college (not with her high school) will count anything in her GPA. We will, of course, check with her school. But I'd like to hear from CC community. In D's school, an A in AP (with AP exam, regardless of the score in national exam) counts 5; an A in a college course offered in her school counts 4.5; an A in a normal course counts 4. It's not that we care that much about GPA. But if a college course can bring her GPA up a bit, it'd be nice. I wonder how your schools deal with this kind of situation?</p>
<p>My D took a community college course when she was in high school, and while the course and the grade were shown on her transcript (with a notation that it was a transfer credit), the grade was not included for purposes of calculating her GPA. Too bad, because it would have helped the GPA. This was the same policy they had for courses/grades from other high schools, as well. FWIW, our high school considers community college courses to be easier than the AP courses at the HS in the equivalent subject.</p>
<p>When and where my kids were in HS: A+ in AP class and A+ in college class got 6 points. A+ in Honors class was 5. Non-honors A+ was 4. A college course only counted in HS GPA if taken during term. Classes during summer didn’t count. I don’t know about on-line because mine never did that. At their school it was possible for a student with a significant number of college courses (all As) to have a lower GPA than a student with more AP courses with A+. </p>
<p>ETA: I think community college classes counted just the same as classes at the local ivy.</p>
<p>You’re going to get as many answers as there are high schools. My kids took dual credit courses. They did show up on the hs transcript, and the grades were calculated in the hs GPA, with a very few exceptions, as unweighted classes.</p>
<p>No weight for college courses (CC, private LAC or state U) at our HS. Not sure if the grades go into the GPA or not…I think they did with S but I’m not positive.</p>
<p>My high school doesn’t weight anything. They give 0.8 credits for each college class (because of the lower number of hours you spend in a college class compared to a high school class), so an individual college class doesn’t affect your GPA as much as a high school class.
(I think the amount of credit they give varies depending on the number of credit hours the college class is worth. But all my college classes are worth 4 credit hours at the college and 0.8 credits at my high school.)</p>
<p>Only credits replacing required high school classes showed up on our kids’ transcripts and our high school doesn’t “weight” so it didn’t matter from a fractional perspective, but college admissions officers can read a transcript and interpret what kids take and what that means…admissions officers see all kinds of things on transcripts.</p>
<p>In our school an A in a regular class is a 4.0 and an A+ in a regular class is a 4.33. For honors you add .33 and for AP you add .43. Our school offers college classes through universities ( ie Syracuse) and they are weighted like honors.</p>
<p>Our district, the grade counts in GPA and there is no weighting. They also don’t recalculate for class rank, so lots of smart kids down below top 30% and some not very smart ones in the top 10%.</p>
<p>In addition to worrying about how the grade counts in the HS GPA you should be aware that the grade will also be included in their undergrad GPA if student is applying to Law School. Not sure about other graduate programs but I am sure others will know the answer to that.</p>
<p>Unless it is part of a dual enrollment arrangement the high school has with the college, most likely it will be ignored by the high school. That is the policy at our school. The class my daughter is currently taking at a college will appear as “study hall” on her high school transcript.</p>
<p>Our school weights the dual enrollment classes as 5, the same as for AP and honors classes. It’s a rather stupid system, because it penalizes kids with otherwise identical schedules who choose to take an elective rather than a study hall. Our weighting system considers the study hall to be the more challenging choice.</p>
<p>I checked with her school. Like most people responded here, her school just ignores it. The counselor says it will not be in the transcript either. It may count as things she does outside of school.
We decided to do it anyway. It helps her when she goes to college. Her school doesn’t offer any econ course. she is going to take micro and macro econ. That’s something she definitely will need in college. </p>
<p>@mathyone, I wish our school is like yours.</p>
<p>Remember too that what the high school does isn’t that relevant to entrance to college. Colleges all have their own calculations, and all of them value rigor even if it doesn’t enter into the math.</p>
<p>@Maxwell, our school’s dual enrollment classes are offered through a local community college. A few of them provide subjects which aren’t typically offered in high school, such as astronomy. Many of them provide vocational training for the kids who aren’t headed to college. And some of them are really just a different version of what’s in my opinion really just high school level work, but the kids can earn community college credits for them. For instance, I think they can take things like dual enrollment English instead of AP English, or dual enrollment precalculus, and get credits which will transfer to state colleges. I have mixed feelings about this since I don’t believe these classes are really on the level of an average 4-year college course.</p>
<p>I can believe normally CC courses are not as hard as APs in high school. Hopefully that means D can handle one of those in addition to her normal course load. If she feels ready to take an AP exam of the topic, she will do it. Otherwise, it’ll be an additional enrichment, that is at least free.</p>
<p>Although somewhat off topic, my S took a fine arts course one summer at a CC while in high school and got an A. This course was simply the gift that just kept on giving. Besides satisfying his high school’’s requirement of one year of fine arts, this six week course also satisfied the UC’s visual and performing arts (requirement “f”) admission requirement. In addition this CC course satisfied his college’s fine arts GE requirement. And as med schools require an applicant to submit a record of all colleges courses taken even in high school, this “A” showed up in his med school application which had a very, very small but still positive effect on his med school application’s overall GPA. Like I said, the gift that just kept on giving.</p>
<p>I took some college classes that were put on my HS transcript and some that were left off. Those that were included were weighted at 1.05 (AP is 1.1). </p>
<p>But if your daughter wants college credit for them down the line, it’s a good idea to leave them off. My school at least doesn’t give credit for college classes listed on your HS transcript.</p>