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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?
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<p>On the other side, who actually <em>cares</em> that one student had, say, an 87, and the other had an 85? I think the point system encourages perfectionism, and that will hurt students when they get to college and can't afford to be perfectionists.</p>
<p>A B is a 3.0 in all the 4.0 systems that I've seen.</p>
<p>For choosing classes, I'd say, go with the hardest schedule with which one can do acceptably well.</p>
<p>curious14 I have found that the SAT is used to award the money. My D with a GPA of 4.6 but SATs of 1200 received zero from one of her colleges. A classmate with a 3.5 GPA but 1260 SAT's was awarded $5k from that school. Now I could understand if they went to different HS but the GPA is from the same HS. The college was buying the higher SAT score- you just needed a minimum GPA of 3.5 and SAT's > 1250.</p>
<p>I doubt very much that the difference between grading systems has a serious effect on the admissions prospects of students from Montgomery and Fairfax counties, which have the 16th and 13th largest school systems in the country, respectively. Admissions officers everywhere are familiar with students from these two systems and know what their grades mean.</p>
<p>I think there could be more of an issue with smaller, more obscure school systems, though, especially if the student is applying to colleges outside their local area.</p>
<p>On another issue: What taxguy says about unweighted GPA is very important. If a kid is going to strategize in terms of course choices in an effort to maximize GPA, it's the unweighted GPA that the kid should be thinking about the most.</p>
<p>Schools are pretty good at taking high school difficulty into account. My high school is a very difficult prep school (but not really well known, as it is not on the East Coast). The highest GPA ever at my school was a 4.0, and we have a lot of smart and driven kids (in fact almost all of the kids are driven and intelligent). The big public school in my area has a lot of grade inflation, and it is not uncommon for kids to have a 4.5 or 4.6 for just signing up for AP's and showing up for class (while at my school it is an extensive application process to even get INTO an AP class (which are capped at 2 per year, and only begin Junior year), and the regular classes are taught at the same or higher level than those at the public school in the area....this has been reported by several kids who have transferred, who couldn't even get into AP's at my school, but get A+'s in the AP's at the big public school). However, when it comes to college, my school is very successful. Out of a 80 kid grade, normally around 20 kids go to the Ivy League, and probably another 45 go to other top 30 schools. The rest normally go to not so highly ranked, but respectable schools like Tulane, etc. The moral of the story, colleges take into account school difficulty. Kids with 3.7's and no connections or legacies at Yale have gotten in.</p>
<p>dudedad notes,"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>Response: Frankly, most of the adcoms that say this are just plain lying! Also, it would be a political disaster for an adcom to tell students to take the easiest courses possible in order to max out their GPA. However, this is sadly the case.</p>
<p>Even worse, many schools are now becoming increasingly "class rank" oriented instead of GPA oriented. Thus, attending a magnet school or a tough, highly ranked public school penalizes these kids considerably. If the school ranks by undweighted GPA, this adds even more weight to taking regular courses. </p>
<p>Frankly , geting into college and get scholarships has become a game. The better you can "game"the system, the better your chances are at geting admitted to good schools and the better your chances are at scholarships.</p>
<p>For example, Wootton High School is very well known for kids achieving high SATs and AC, plus having a lot of driven kids and driven parents, not to mention taking a lot of AP/college courses while in high school. What isn't known, however, is that that a number of parents have learned how to "game" the SAT and ACT. They participate in group tutoring for the SAT/ACT starting as early as sophomore year and continues weekly through the junior year. Imagine preparing for SATs/ACTs for TWO YEARS or MORE! It has shown to be very effective.</p>
<p>Taxguy,
you are correct that rank may be more important than GPA. Many schools in our area do not report unweighted GPA and ranks are done based on the weighted GPA only. A student who takes only "regular" classes has absolutely no hope of achieving a high class rank and likely will be in the bottom half or worse of the class. But how much does a rank mean when each rank is separated by hundredths or even thousandths of a point?</p>
<p>quote: "On the other side, who actually <em>cares</em> that one student had, say, an 87, and the other had an 85? I think the point system encourages perfectionism, and that will hurt students when they get to college and can't afford to be perfectionists."
Apparently Adcoms do, apparently teachers do, apparently you do to some extent or you wouldn't be following this thread. Who said students in college can't afford to be perfectionists? Does that mean college students should not proofread papers, look over tests?</p>
<p>Fun anecdote: The valedictorian at the H.S. I graduated from thought that marijuana was administered intravenously. [Those kids "shooting up marijuana"...]</p>
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Who said students in college can't afford to be perfectionists? Does that mean college students should not proofread papers, look over tests?
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<p>Not falling into the trap of perfectionism is not the same as being sloppy. Of course you try not to be sloppy. But you prioritize your tasks. You learn the concept of selective neglect. You learn when it's time to move on. You try to get, say, at least a 85% on all of the week's assignments, rather than trying to get every last point at the risk of not leaving yourself with enough time to do all of them by the deadlines. You learn to bounce back from setbacks and shrug off the loss of a few points. You learn that preserving your health and sanity by getting at least 6 hours of sleep a night is worth losing five points on your problem set. If you don't, and you are in a challenging college program, you will be overwhelmed and miserable.</p>
<p>Furthermore, to all the people who advocate gaming the system by taking easy classes...what will the kids who take this advice do once they <em>get</em> to college? What will they do when they can't handle the work because they took the easy way out in high school? What will they do about picking classes and pursuing research projects when they've been conditioned for years to believe that the risk of failure is to be avoided at all costs?</p>
<p>Apparently the adcoms at the schools that I applied to didn't care that I had only a 3.85, while the top 5% of my class had 4.0s.</p>
<p>
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Who said students in college can't afford to be perfectionists? Does that mean college students should not proofread papers, look over tests?
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</p>
<p>Not falling into the trap of perfectionism is not the same as being sloppy. Of course you try not to be sloppy. But you prioritize your tasks. You learn the concept of selective neglect. You learn when it's time to move on. You try to get, say, at least a 85% on all of the week's assignments, rather than trying to get every last point at the risk of not leaving yourself with enough time to do all of them by the deadlines. You learn to bounce back from setbacks and shrug off the loss of a few points. You learn that preserving your health and sanity by getting at least 6 hours of sleep a night is worth losing five points on your problem set. If you don't, and you are in a challenging college program, you will be overwhelmed and miserable.</p>
<p>Furthermore, to all the people who advocate gaming the system by taking easy classes...what will the kids who take this advice do once they <em>get</em> to college? What will they do when they can't handle the work because they took the easy way out in high school? What will they do about picking classes and pursuing research projects when they've been conditioned for years to believe that the risk of failure is to be avoided at all costs?</p>
<p>Apparently the adcoms at the schools that I applied to didn't care that I had only a 3.85, while the top 5% of my class had 4.0s.</p>
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You're much better off getting As in easier science classes than forcing yourself to take hard ones, ending up with Bs, for instance.
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<p>Scary mindset. Define "much better off." In terms of unweighted GPA? Yes, true. In terms of actual knowledge? Presumably not (an A in an easier class vs. an F in a tough class, then yes, you'll probably learn more from the former, but a B shows a pretty good grasp of challenging material). In terms of personal growth? Doubtfully. I know that this was said in a particular context (in which it did make sense), but it's stated quite generally.</p>
<p>I have to agree with jessiehl here: "What will the kids who take this advice do once they <em>get</em> to college...when they've been conditioned for years to believe that the risk of failure is to be avoided at all costs?"</p>
<p>I'm all for knowing one's limits, being smart about course selection, and so forth, but this "high-school-as-nothing-more-than-a-means" attitude is troublesome.</p>
<p>Student615 notes,"What will the kids who take this advice do once they <em>get</em> to college...when they've been conditioned for years to believe that the risk of failure is to be avoided at all costs?""</p>
<p>Response:Just start working for any major corporation. Most of the manager types do whatever is necessary to avoid any risk of failure or of "looking bad."</p>
<p>"Cover my..." is the buyword for most employees of big business and even in the government. Many times it is the employee who made the least overservable errors who got the promotion and not necessarily the employee who took the most risks. Although I certainly don't agree with this type of policy, I have seen it many, many times in action.</p>
<p>Also, let me be very clear. I do believe that kids should take honors and AP courses even if it compromises their admission chances. High school is one time where they will be building up skills for life,which I consider more important than grades. However, it is a sad fact that unweighted GPA trumps a slightly lower GPA with all tougher courses and class rank can also be crucial for some colleges.</p>
<p>taxguy, imo, in your cases your daughter's unweighted GPA might just missed the cut off line. </p>
<p>Not knowing much about how those offer 'merit-based' scholarship colleges reward their scholarship. But from almost all the college info sessions I got the message similar to this "The single most important element we are looking at is your school transcript, which reflects your four years HS performance. SAT, AP, etc. scores are important but not as important as people make it to be, most case we just use it to measure students from different schools across the nations. The next important thing we look at is how you chalange yourself to take the most difficult courses available to you. If your school offer 16 APs, you only took 1 or 2 then we'll ask why. If you took 6 or 7 and doing well its OK....We look your application with the background context. In some cases we don't even consider the so called valedictorian, because some schools hav 80 valedictorians, can you believe this?" .... In our HS a B/B- in Honor/AP(same waighting) stands for "Good" while A-/B+ stands for 'Excellent'. imo, B is doing well.</p>
<p>I think it make sense most of these colleges adcom process uses 'unweighted gpa' for first cut-off. Then they look for the difficulty of your course load and compare to the profile your school provided to see how you compare to your peers with the same 'opportunities'.</p>
<p>The difference between a 3.8 and 4.0 can mean tens of thousands in merit aid, admission or rejection to universities, etc. etc. This is a high stakes game and people need to think strategically to maximize what is possible for them, as individuals.</p>
<p>There is a lot of one-sized-fits-all advice being dished out on CC. [Actually, it's advice that only applies to the top 1% of students being applied to everyone.] If you are trying to get into a super-elite college, you probably do need to take as rigorous of a courseload as possible, but you also need to get straight As in those courses. If you can't do that, though, you're better off getting straight As in a somewhat less rigorous courseload (playing to your strengths).</p>
<p>
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The difference between a 3.8 and 4.0 can mean tens of thousands in merit aid, admission or rejection to universities, etc. etc. This is a high stakes game and people need to think strategically to maximize what is possible for them, as individuals.
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<p>In some cases, maybe, but this isn't really the case in VA where Fairfax is located. And I imagine that is why it hasn't changed and won't change any time soon. While they bring up Indiana University in the article, I don't think that's going to be a compelling case for a VA school system to change their policies. And while I realize that "theoretically" the same work (which I think is better called "the same raw percentage") could result in a higher GPA just minutes away over the MD border, in reality, I don't think that's happening. I would imagine for the same quality of work, students are receiving roughly the same unweighted grades. In fact I am fairly sure of this, since I have friends who graduated from various school systems in the area.</p>
<p>Our experience has been that while the UW shows actual grades, weighted indicates the difficulty of the courseload. But as is my usual caveat, GPAs are meaningless without context (in this case, the transcript and a school profile). A 3.8 with honors courses and a couple of APs may mean something entirely different than a 3.8 with many APs and/or post-AP courses (or where the course goes far beyond what the relevant AP exam covers). Top 5% at a neighborhood school may be different from top 20% at a public school with a selective admission specialized program that draws from dozens of high schools. </p>
<p>For perfectly legitimate reasons, posters may not want to go in to that level of detail about their schools on these forums -- so I try not to draw conclusions about GPAs that folks post, knowing that my own kids' GPAs may not look spectacular by CC standards, but represent some very heavy-duty academics (as evidenced by national test scores, awards, etc.).</p>
<p>DS1 took the hardest stuff he could get his hands on and let the grade chips fall where they may. It paid off for him, and he won't freak out when he gets a B in college. DS2 may pay a price with a more middling GPA, but he wouldn't trade .3-.4 GPA points to give up his current program (we've asked).</p>