<p>I'm new to this forum and have a very basic question about the how colleges evaluate GPAs. In our school system, an A = 94-100, B = 85-93, C =75-84, etc. Pluses and minuses are not used. The four quarter grades plus the final exam are equally weighted to produce a final year grade. There are no semester grades. In my opinion, the teachers are pretty rigorous graders.</p>
<p>My son is a good student (11th grade). But every single time he's gotten a B, his numeric average has been between 90 and 93. I know of at least one neighboring school system where an A is 90 to 100. I don't know whether our school keeps track of the numeric averages; I doubt it.</p>
<p>How do colleges take this disparity into account--or do they? I know that schools provide information about their grading systems on the face sheet they submit to colleges. But how do colleges know that a student's B in a course would have been an A at another school? Or do they care?</p>
<p>This is a great question. I'd love to see some knowledgable replies.</p>
<p>My son's school is very small and also is very tough about grading. He has the problem that with a graduating class of 75, the top 10% is less than 8 kids! His school does not even rank, because of its small size. I know some schools view that as a liability. Meanwhile this kid has taken 8 APs, 4 college courses, has a midyear UW average of 90 and an ACT of 33.</p>
<p>It would be wonderful if there was a uniform way of grading by size of school. We've been told that schools look at SATs and ACTs, as well as difficulty of program, as ways of balancing out the grading issue for schools like your son's or mine. But I wonder if that is true.</p>
<p>I think that the disparity is so great (and take a look at the "weighted GPA" threads for even more variations), that adcoms must look at the school information that is sent....I asked the same question as you when we moved to NC, where I believe all the public schools have the 94-100 score for A. It didn't seem particularly "fair" to compare those students to people from the traditional 90-100 scale. GPA is just one of several factors that is looked at, and I don't believe there is any major university that has a hard and fast GPA cut-off when looking at applications. While having a 4.0 unweighted GPA is awesome, it's not a requirement, even for the top schools. Good luck!</p>
<p>We have the same grading system. Well actually we give pluses for everything but As so 90-93 would be a B+ (but I've heard colleges don't really consider the pluses). But on the transcript it shows the course vs the (unweighted) letter grade received. The GPA is on another line below. Therefore anyone looking would not see a weighted GPA but the actual letter grades received. In addition they send a school profile that shows the grading system. A state school is likely to be familiar with the grading system of the counties in the state since they probably receive applicants from all or nearly all of them most years. With private or out of state schools this won't be true. The counselor also writes a letter of recommendation though (for schools that want it) that can explain these things too although the school profile should do it. The school profile will also allow them to see if the student took the "most challenging" coursework at the school. </p>
<p>I think they do care. Class rank also helps to show whether Bs would be As at other schools. Some schools may have 50 kids about a 4.0, other schools a kid with a high 3. something may be in the top 10, etc. Another thing that helps is if other kids from the school apply to the same school or if kids have applied in the past...which is going to be likely for some schools and unlikely for others. But, overall it seems to work out. I know kids who have gotten in all sorts of places with this system. What mattered was that they stayed in the top part of the class and took the most challenging courses (along with everything else of course).</p>
<p>Boy we were in your shoes last year. My daughters school also uses Numerics While it differs from school to school most operate under the scale of A=4, B=3,C=2, D=1. At our school A = 90 and above, B=80 to 89 ect. The shame is if you get a 79 or a 89 it's still a 2 or a 3.</p>
<p>Colleges take core academic courses like History, English, Math, Foreign Language, Science and average them. They don't include GYM, Art, Culinary Arts, Health ect. They take the numeric grade for each of those courses add them together and then divide by the number of credits. So for example if you got A's in History and Math and B's in Chemistry and Spanish you got 4+4+3+3 or a total of 14/4 credits=3.5 GPA for those courses. They then take all the core courses on your transcript and follow the same method. I am told that they use the HS school criteria to determine the resultant letter grade. Half year courses get half the weight.</p>
<p>The other difference is weighting, most schools award an extra .5 to the final grade if the course was IB, AP or honors. So a B as a final grade now becomes a 3.5 instead of a 3.0. This is why at upper tier schools like University of Florida you see an average GPA for the Freshman class entering of 3.95.</p>
<p>It is most helpful in these situations to have a detailed repport sent by the GC outlining grading procedures and the breakdown of grades. The worst of both worlds is a punishing grading situation AND no data on class rank or grade distribution. </p>
<p>The 90-100 thing as opposed to 92-94-95-100 is not going to make a difference. The school with the higher numerical requirement may have more students making A's than the one with the lower requirement. An A is an A is an A. Whatever your school considers as an A , that's what the college will consider an A. </p>
<p>In a perfect and consistant world a 92 would mean the same thing at all high schools. That is certainly not the case. It is not a measure of mastery of a set curriculum. </p>
<p>As a proactive parent ;) I took it upon myself to include grading information along with the transcript. As an example , if only 4% of the students receive A's in coursework that is something that the college needs to know. And that holds true whether your kid is a 4.0 or a 3.0. It makes both kids look better. </p>
<p>Whereas if 30% of the kids receive A's but 40% receive 4 and 5's on AP tests , that tells the college something about the school, too. JMO.</p>
<p>Edit: Do not assume a school sends a school profile. Our's sent nothing.</p>
<p>The grading issue has been a perennially contentious one in my town. Princedog, you speak of state schools being familiar with county grading systems, but in NJ we don't have county school districts. We have over 600 school districts in our tiny little state. 600 little fiefdoms run with varrying degress of competence. It's a mess.</p>
<p>Curmudgeon, the school profile and its design (or at least some grading info) was changed after years of fighting. Sounds as if you inserted your own! Did you pay off the GC?</p>
<p>Our town is one of only two (I am told) in NJ that required a 94 for an A. Reformists wanted the A=90 scale used. Traditionalists balked, saying this would lower standards. They claimed our town's wonderful reputation was so widely known, that no student would be harmed (This is laughable, by the way. We're pretty mediocre, actually.) Reformists then pushed for straight numericals. Or at least inclusion of numerics next to the letter grade on the transcript. Among the reformers was an admissions counselor at a local college who claimed that the first thing done w/ applications is a sorting of files into two piles: >1200 and <1200SAT. Further sorting is then done by GPA. So our kids were being hurt.</p>
<p>The compromise: + and - grades. A+ = 98-100, A = 94-97, A- = 92-93, B+ = 90-91, and so on. Ranking is eliminated & now they do deciles.</p>
<p>I'm not sending D here, & don't plan to send S in the future. The anti-intellectualism that permeates every issue here, every BOE meeting, every attempt to evaluate our kids' best interests, is driving many parents & their kids away.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Curmudgeon, the school profile and its design (or at least some grading info) was changed after years of fighting. Sounds as if you inserted your own! Did you pay off the GC?
[/quote]
Why would the GC have to know anything about it? In D's case she did but had she balked I'm sure we would have found a way to make sure it was viewed at the same time, and in the proper context. In fact, you can bet on it. ;). </p>
<p>One way someone could do that is to allow the school to seal the rec's and GC statement and transcript for mailing, signed across the flap for security. Then place that entire envelope within a larger envelope containing a cover letter from D and other materials as follows :
</p>
<p>Something like that would probably answer any confusion. </p>
<p>Look folks, I'm sure there are some that think we were overly cautious/skeptical/paranoid about verification and double and triple checking and building some redundancy into the system. But with good reason. My D was ripped off on the Byrd scholarship . My D was not a candidate for USA Today Honors because the school knew nothing about them, and I am sure the list is much longer than those two items. I won't allow myself to think about that. LOL. She had excellent results and we were more than pleased.</p>
<p>I work in the admissions office at my college and I know that they actually go through all the transcripts and re-evaluate the GPA based on their own system. I don't actually know what that system is, but at least they end up with a somewhat equal basis for comparison.</p>
<p>I went to school in NJ and I always wondered what people made of my transcript. We do the 100-90 = A system (something my German teacher constantly complained about...enough people fail with that system as it is, I guess she wanted even more of them to fail?). Advanced classes were 'half-weighted' (4.5 instead of 4 for an A) and AP classes were 'full-weighted' (5 instead of 4), BUT....about half of our AP classes weren't actually called "AP ___" and we had absolutely no classes called honors anything. All the students knew which classes were which, but the names rarely reflected that and I really wonder whether the colleges I applied to picked up on the fact that, say, 'advanced physics' was really AP physics but 'advanced world cultures' wasn't even in the advanced track and wasn't weighted. I know that the school sends out a sheet with statistics on it and a list of all the classes offered, but I don't know if they have some sort of detailed explanation for their naming conventions.</p>
<p>Good advice, curmudgeon. I was raised, as were all good Catholic school kids, with the refrain of "Don't toot your own horn" sounding in my ears at every turn. I have to shake that when the kids get those applications out.</p>
<p>I don't really understand the dismay at the differences between rubrics. It is all relative anyway. Our school has a 93-100 = A standard. My daughter has sometimes missed the "A" by several points and received a B. At another school using the 90-100.=A standard, would she have achieved the "A"? Not necessarily. The grading at the other school might be totally different. It may take a LOT more work to achieve a 90, and if my daughter were at that school, she might have only achieved an 85 in the class. Who knows? It is so dependant on teachers, tests, projects, etc. That is why there are many ways to evaluate a student (rank, standardized tests, grades, etc.). None of them by themselves are fair, but hopefully a broad look at all of them gives admissions a better picture. Knowing the high school helps tremendously too.</p>
<p>Interesting threads on this whole GPA thing, the same question comes up very often on the Greens College Chat on the Peterson's site. It is a large debate even I would guess within the admissions offices.</p>
<p>Above the GPA question one needs to remember that schools will focus on Junior and Senior level performance along with test scores and overall GPA. A strong student in the last two years demonstrating that they are doing college level work with grades in the A's and B's and an upward trend in marks, can offset some performance issues earlier in their school history. Conversly lower performance in the final 2 years or year can in spite of a good GPA raise a red flag. That is why the guidance folk hammer in this notion of don't slack off and continue taking challenging courses.</p>
<p>With respect to one of the other comments our HS does send out profiles on the school with each application but in this whole inexact process one wonders if they make any difference at all along with Essays and ExtraCirc.</p>
<p>To get some additional insights on this whole subject Google the words: ADMIT, DENY, DONE. You will find an article from the St Petersburg Tiimes. It gave us an interesting reading on my daughters quest to attend a upper tier school in Florida and I think it's a window into many other large college process. It can make your hair stand on end.</p>
<p>What an interesting group of responses as we begin the college search (road trip to University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill this weekend)! I'll relax a little and not nitpick about the points. I already know I'm going to be hypervigilant when those applications go in, because we have a very overworked counselor--and hey, I've seen "Orange County." I know for a fact that our school submits a face sheet about the school, but I'll remember to check what's on it. I don't know if the school ranks--there are 100 kids per class, and the school is 70% girls. You guess who ends up in the top 10%. (Disclaimer: I am the feminist mom of a teenaged boy.) I live in an area where "helicopter" parenting is the norm. I've always prided myself on my moderation, but on this college admissions thing I'm going to let my principles slide just a tad.</p>
<p>An aside: I've lurked on this discussion forum for many months. Just reading about the 4.89 GPAs and the straight 800s stresses me out. But I'm determined that the college admissions process will be as low-stress as possible for my son. Wherever he ends up, he'll be a good student. We are looking at state universities (to take advantage of the DC Tuition Assistance Grant) and private universities with good merit aid. He has a very specific interest, which helps narrow the field.</p>
<p>Thanks again. Hope there will be even more interesting responses.</p>
<p>I like the way they do it at my daughter's high school, with a sliding scale by percentage point. A 100 average is equal to a 4.0 and so on down the scale. The down side of course is that not every school does it that way, but it eliminates the drama of missing the next highest letter grade by one percentage point. It also makes ranking more meaningful and precise. It wasn't until I read it on the boards here that I had any idea that some high schools graduate 30 or 40 valedictorians per year, all the kids with perfect 4.0 GPAs. No doubt some of those kids barely squeeked by into that group by getting a lot of 90-91's, and perhaps applying pressure to teachers for the bump up. </p>
<p>I like curmudgeon's sample letter up there. Few schools will volunteer that the AP courses in their profile may not be given every year or that scheduling issues make it impossible to take more than two a year, or whatever is the particular circumstance in a given school district. The more context that can be given the better.</p>