<p>Interesting article about the nonuniformity of high school grading standards. </p>
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<p>D@mn straight.</p>
<p>I've seen the difficulty of work issued by the local high school and it PALES IN COMPARISON to the assignments dished out by my oh-so-loving charter.</p>
<p>I personally believe we need to ditch the whole 4.0+ grading scheme. I mean, who is a better student: J with a 3.9 or M with a 4.8? M probably took more AP classes (which are graded subjectively in many areas) and perhaps J was not given the opportunity to stack up on those classes.</p>
<p>Anyways, I think high school should be about college prep. There shouldn't have to exist a federal-sanctioned organization that sets alleged-standards, especially one that awards students for completing busy work. </p>
<p>A few months ago there was an editorial on "Kids who ROCK", which spoke of the local alleged-brainiacs who earned top marks in his/her school. One of the kids mentioned was a friend of mine, which was quite a surprise since I never really considered him an academic. According to the article, my friend had a 4.5 GPA. At the time, I had no idea GPAs could go past 4.0 (2 years ago btw), but my surprise was more on my friends achievements. I questioned him about the article and he said all he did was sign up for 10 APs a year (1 in the summer) an manage decent scores. </p>
<p>Okay..little anecdotal, I know. But I hope the message is clear: American education is being dominated by unnecessary properties, forcing students to keep up with the steroid-grades or face <em>gasp</em> deferral/rejection from his/her favored college.</p>
<p>As demonstrated on this website, school is a GAME - nothing else. If only I wasn't such a rule breaker....XD</p>
<p>Maybe I'm being overly generous to college adcoms, but I largely agree with Betsy Brown...I really did feel like these disparities were taken into account.</p>
<p>I came from a very intense, fairly grade-deflated HS. No AP's were offered before junior year and the number we were allowed to take was capped after that. It was understood that normal classes were taught at AP level and AP classes were taught at an exceptionally accelerated level. I definitely didn't have a cumulativel 4.0. The highest GPA in the history of the school was probably around the average of CC posters'! This was not one of the nation's most well-known high schools. That said, I got into multiple (respectable) schools with average accepted student GPA's of 4.0+. It drives me crazy to see these "Chances" threads with kids being told "You'll never get into ______ with only a 3.8," with respondents having absolutely no awareness of the context of that GPA. </p>
<p>In my own experience (and like I said, perhaps I'm being overly generous), it's students, particularly those who are not feeling "hurt" by the system, who are less aware of these disparities. I've seen a lot of fluffed up "My cumulative GPA is a 4.8" egos, as well as very unnecessarily stressed "I'll never get in anywhere with my lousy 3.7" kids. Both parties forget that this number is looked at alongside standardized test scores, course selection, class rank (sometimes), teacher and counselor recommendations, grading scale, general articulation skills (if interviewed), and perhaps a history of applicants from the same high school. Some particularly deflated schools will send an explanatory note, perhaps mentioning the school's average GPA, average number of AP's taken, or what have you. Many colleges recalculate GPA anyway, based on their own system of weights.</p>
<p>So, is this still unfair and (for lack of a more appropriate term) kind of sucky? Yeah, I definitely think so. And might it really hurt students in certain cases? Unfortunately, I'm very sure it does. I don't, however, think it hurts as many students to as considerable an extent as is often suggested by students around these boards.</p>
<p>Thanks for posting this. The varying ways GPAs are determined is a pet peeve of mine. I believe exactly one student at my son's high school has a perfect all A record, whereas 4.0 GPAs seem to be a dime-a-dozen on CC. There's no lack of bright students at my son's school, but there's also no grade inflation (with most teachers, at least).</p>
<p>Even within the school, the variations in grading from teacher to teacher for the same course, the policy of "double counting" mid-term grades in calculating end-of-year grades, the inclusion of some truly stupid required classes, the absence of weighting for honors classes (there is weighting for AP classes for class rank purposes), and the policy of including +s and -s in GPAs except in the case of A+s make comparisons of GPAs pretty meaningless.</p>
<p>In my utopian world, not only would admissions officers be appreciative of the above, but also students doing "chances" on CC would stop cavalierly dismissing non-4.0 GPAs as automatically being too low for acceptance at selective schools.</p>
<p>Harvard_Grad
[quote]
News-flash: Life is NOT fair, and it NEVER will be.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Is that what they teach you at Harvard?</p>
<p>I kid.</p>
<p>I doubt the system will ever reform the stats-driven student populous. Who cares about learning when you can flex your academic ego with meaningless digits..</p>
<p>Ds school puts numeric grades on the transcript with the level of the course, regular, honors/pre-AP, AP or GT. Our district uses a 5 point system, but with the numeric scores on the transcript, the college can calculate any way they want. </p>
<p>Additionally, the AP exam scores are also put on the transcript so the university has a benchmark. As in AP courses seem to correlate into 4s & 5s on the AP exams. The grades in the AP courses are pretty deflated.</p>
<p>Although there is no actual limit to the number of AP classes that a student may take, they must have been recommended to take it by at least a high B in an honors course or an A in a regular class. GT identified kids can do as they please and often take brutal course loads. This doesn't always translate into straight As, but you can not doubt the vigor of taking 6-7 AP classes. The only limitations are the regular classes required for graduation (PE, Athletics, Fine Arts (if not good enough to take Honors or unavailable), Band, Health, Speech, etc. As D puts it GPA busters, unweighted classes.</p>
<p>Very few kids get perfect 100s in the upper level courses and can end up with a B in a class like gym.</p>
<p>It is an issue that's pretty big among the local college bound set, but I don't think it's that big a deal. Fairfax grading scale has A as 94-100. Arlington has 90-100, and I think MoCo has 90-100 also? I'm not sure how they convert that to GPA, but I know for Arlington there is no B+ (90-93 in Fairfax) so if you miss the A then you're getting a 3.0 not a 3.5. And we know there are some teacher who don't give As, curve it, etc. - so that grading scale might leave you worse off in certain situations.</p>
<p>It seems pretty clear that no matter what the grading scale is, the grades generally fall so that a certain top percentage gets an A. I'm just not convinced this is an issue in admissions. Adcoms spend a lot of time accounting for these differences in their admissions process. </p>
<p>Within Fairfax, there are IB and AP schools but not mixed like in some counties. With AP you can take the classes in 10th grade and they are weighted both junior and senior year, but a lot of IB classes are only weighted in the exam year (generally, senior year). So even at the top of my class in an IB school, I doubt my GPA was as high as the kids in the top spot at some of the AP schools. Do I think it mattered? No, I'm pretty sure everyone in those top spots at the county schools got into the two competitive state schools (if they applied). What mattered was the rank, teacher evaluations contextualizing the student, course difficulty, etc. It all might seem unfair or confusing if you just glance at it as an issue, but once you consider it all, it's pretty transparent. Certainly it feels nice to have a 4.6 and to say your kid has a 4.6, but this is a GPA that was actually not achievable at my high school...and I don't think that was a problem or something an admissions officer is incapable of comprehending. There seems to be some sort of misperception that colleges take applications, line them up by GPA value, and then take the top GPAs, with no method of comparison. This flat out wouldn't be in their best interest and just isn't the case.</p>
<p>The valedictorian at my D's HS couldn't understand Hamlet in English class. My D gets a big laugh at the Valedictorian asking over and over again what Shakespeare meant. For the record, D, who is NOT a 4.0 student but a diligent one nonetheless, got in JHU ED, while valedictorian is going to Rutgers. GPAs are not the sole predictor of success in college. The dean of my older D's college told me he shudders over the the one with 4.0 UW GPAs because they break down at their grade that's less than an A (older D went to a tough college and took a tough major).
Personally, I also dislike the 4.0 system for HS; I much prefer the NY system of percentages- you can get so much more nuance in a grade that way.</p>
<p>I cared about this a lot more when I was in high school and thought that the disparities would hurt me in college admissions. Once I realized that they didn't, I quit caring, except to the extent that it annoys me when people post their weighted GPAs here without the unweighted ones, because the weighted GPA tells me nothing.</p>
<p>HSIsOverrated: Guess what? Once you're in college, nobody will care about your high school stats ever again! So don't angst too much about it.</p>
<p>NJ_mother: The idea of the percentage grade makes me shudder...people are grade-grubbers enough under the 4.0 system. I can't imagine how awful and ludicrous it is in a system with nuance. I can picture all the whiners crying to the teachers about how they got a 97 instead of a 99...</p>
<p>I think the AVERAGE weighted grade in my kids' HS is about a 4.1; because there is the attitude that any course at THIS high school is way harder than the average HS...she's way above a 4.0 but definitely not in top 20%.</p>
<p>Student615, your hs seems very similar to our district hs academically with its grading and AP policy. And while the inevitable B or (gasp) C might bruise tender egos, it does not seem to affect college admissions. And more importantly, it prepares its students to tackle college level work.</p>
<p>Also keep in mind that the hs gpa is just one factor in college admissions and as long as the hs's profile report is detailed enough, adcoms can make adjustments to equalize them during the evaluation and decision-making process.</p>
<p>Finally hs gpa is only one factor in college admissions. Our hs continues to rank to further put its lower than typical gpa's into perspective and of course there are the standardized SAT1/SAT2/ACT tests to further distinguish between students' academic capabilities.</p>
<p>GPA's are merely one piece of the puzzle.</p>
<p>Let me add a twist to this discussion. I am sure that you have been told that colleges want kids to take the toughest courses possible,which improves admission chances. For the most part, this is a LIE!</p>
<p>Yes, the top 30-50 schools do want kids to take the toughest curriculum possible;however, after years of dealing with adcoms for kids and dealing with scholarship committees, I have found that it is the UNWEIGHTED GPA that matters for most schools. I have seen time and again, a 3.6 GPA with all regular courses trump a 3.4 GPA with all honors. A good case in point involved my kids.</p>
<p>My son took most regular courses in high school graduating with a 3.65 GPA. His weighted GPA was about the same. He was eligible for "National Honor Society" and was admitted to Towson and other schools into their honors program and was awarded scholarships.</p>
<p>My daughter, who was in a magnet program and took almost all honors and AP courses, had a 3.45 unweighted GPA. She did NOT qualify for "National Honors Society" because they require an unweighted 3.6 GPA. She was NOT offered honors at any school including Towson nor was she offered the same scholarships.Incidentally, she had 40 points higher in the SAT than my son.</p>
<p>When my daughter applied to various schools, she was told by EVERY adcom that they use unweighted GPA since they can't evaluate the honors courses among other reasons.</p>
<p>Ironically, her college GPA was MUCH higher than my son's and probably much higher than most kids that were admitted into the various honors programs.</p>
<p>BE AWARE OF THIS. </p>
<p>Bottom line: If you have a kid that can achieve "A's" taking honors courses, go for it. If, however, they get "B's" or less in honors/AP, take regular courses if they can get better grades. Unweighted grades are king.</p>
<p>This is why people should be strategizing from 9th grade on. A good-but-not-exceptional student shouldn't take the hardest possible courseload, much better to take a reasonably hard courseload and earn high grades. You're much better off getting As in easier science classes than forcing yourself to take hard ones, ending up with Bs, for instance.</p>
<p>Jessiehl, the percentage system allows teachers to give an 85 instead of a B. What's a B? Anywhere from 3.0 to 3.9 in the 4.0 system. Does a school do plus and minus in the GPA? My D's doesn't, so when she has an 89 average in Hon Chem and gets a B for the course, who knew she was a better student than the one with the 80 average?
Grade grubbing is more of a college problem I think. You can't do it at my D's HS.</p>
<p>Taxguy, your advice is very sound especially if you look at the quality of the math and science teachers in your child(ren)'s HS. At my D's HS, the honors teachers (not all of them) for math and science are worse teachers than for the regular math/science teachers. The AP science teachers are awful. After a disaster with AP chem last year, H and I wouldn't let D take any more AP science classes.</p>
<p>My S's HS decided to not include college classes into GPA. My S took 5 classes at the U first term junior year (math, econ, Latin, ...), and "only" 5 APs. He lost his place as Val to someone taking all his classes at the HS. This "rule" took effect Dec 10. His GC suggested he apply to college then and there, and by good fortune, he was accepted at a good school. </p>
<p>So much for rankings. I do think that many admission committees take the time to see if someone has been a part of IB program and the range of courses. Unfortunately, Taxguy's children are examples of the value of A's.</p>
<p>The problem with honors classes (not AP or IB which are to some extent standardized curriculums) is that all schools don't have them, so I can see why colleges find it difficult to take into account. Of the school systems mentioned in this article, for example, Fairfax County does not offer "honors" level high school classes, except in the 9th and 10th grades at AP schools (at IB schools, these are "pre-IB" and are usually different courses to meet various graduation requirements and preparation for diploma program). In 11th and 12th grade, there is only AP/IB and regular. </p>
<p>I think that taxguy's post hits on one of the real disparities among these geographically close VA/MD school districts: the three track system vs the two track system, and what that means or doesn't mean for admissions. When there is an honors level designation, admissions officers may not know how to view it: is it comparable to "regular" in this school system, a little harder, a lot harder? That is difficult to know, and I think it's often discounted and could lead to problems. </p>
<p>The best planning advice in that situation is to try and determine (through neighbors and friends with older students) what the individual situation seems to be in your state and school system. Generally, I would say that in the three track system, if the student has to choose between the path of a few APs and then the rest "regular" courses, or all honors courses, maybe with one AP, go whichever route allows them to successfully take the most AP classes, which colleges know how to evaluate. If they aren't taking any, still choose between honors and regular carefully, and select teacher recommendations even more carefully, probably from the honors classes. Teacher recommendations can be almost overlooked in this fervor over grades and SATs, but they're important for the smaller schools and IMO can really make or break the application for a hardworking student who has been adventurous within reason but not breezed through certain courses.</p>
<p>Of course though the adcoms will always tell you a B in an AP is better than an A in a "regular" course...</p>
<p>This is one of the reasons why standardized tests (SATs, ACT's, SAT II's, AP's and IB's) are so important. They not only allow a direct objective basis for comparing students, the distribution of standardized test scores for the HS gives adcoms an objective basis for interpreting grades from a given HS.</p>
<p>News Flash--most colleges use the A, B, C system too. What's an 85? Does that mean you got 85% of all questions right on tests? I doubt it. It's just false specificity</p>