Grade Conversion - Issue or Non-issue?

<p>My son's school grades on a 0-100 point scale. They say that they convert transcripts to a 1-4 scale for all college applicants before sending to schools.</p>

<p>They are apparently using a non-standard conversion to do this. According to the conversion chart found on the College Board and Princeton Review websites, grades falling into the 0-100 "A" range should convert to a 4.0. Our school is converting low-range A's to as low as a 3.51.</p>

<p>I think this puts our kids at a competitive disadvantage. </p>

<p>I haven't kicked up much of fuss about this because, frankly, I don't have any idea if it's a big deal or not.</p>

<p>Anyone have any insights or opinions about this, and whether it's something that should be of concern?</p>

<p>in our school system ( and standard to my knowledge):</p>

<p>90-92.9=A-=3.7
93-96=A=4.0</p>

<p>above 96 is at discrection of school (i.e. whether to go to 4.3 or have everything above 93 at 4.0)</p>

<p>No way a low range A should be a 3.5…but…if it is explained on your school profile that goes out to colleges, they will see the harsh conversion…and in addition, if you rank, it will show up there too…</p>

<p>I have heard of others on CC where the A doesnt kick in until a 93 though…</p>

<p>However, this was the first time I have ever heard of converting 0-100 to a 4.0 scale after the fact…just for transcript purposes…</p>

<p>The conversion scale listed on the College Board website:</p>

<p>A+ (97-100) = 4.0
A (93-96) = 4.0
A- (90-92) = 3.7</p>

<p>B+ (87-89) = 3.3
B (83-86) = 3.0
B- (80-82) = 2.7</p>

<p>C+ (77-79) = 2.3
C (73-76) = 2.0
C- (70-72) = 1.7</p>

<p>D+ (67-69) = 1.3
D (65-66) = 1.0
E/F (below 65) = 0.0</p>

<p>And the scale our high school says it is using:</p>

<p>100=4.01
95=3.79
90=3.51
85=3.18
82.8=3.02
80=2.8</p>

<p>Actually, by the time you get down to 80, our scale runs higher than the standard. Weird.</p>

<p>My daughter attended public school freshman year and it used a traditional 4.0 scale (an 89.5 was rounded up to an A). She then transferred to a school with a 100-point scale. To me, the biggest disadvantage was to A students because in the vast majority of schools, a 90 percent is an A. So how can a 91 average on a 100-point scale be a 3.75 or whatever?</p>

<p>The advantage to the 100-point scale is that you can get a couple of high Bs and still maintain a 90+ average. However, it is nearly impossible to get more than a 100-point average. Many, many students have above a 4.0 with weighting. I do not think that the 100-point scale hurt my daughter’s admission chances, but I do think that it hurt her when she applied for private (local) scholarships.</p>

<p>I think that it is crazy for the school to recalculate averages for the purpose of college applications. The top colleges have their own way to recalculate and do. I think the school would do a better service to the students by either including a well-written school profile that includes a grading scale explanation or start using a 4.0 scale. It is not a great idea for a high school to recalculate everything based on what they think the
3000+ colleges in this country might want.</p>

<p>I don’t think it really matters. Every college we visited stated they recalculate grades based upon *their *own grading scale. The UGA admissions blog talks about this (as a point of reference if you want to see it in writing from a college).</p>

<p>FWIW my son’s school grades on a 0 to 100 basis. And according to Naviance, their students do very well in getting into top colleges.</p>