<p>I'm curious about others schools' grading scales, as they often seem to be different than my kids', and how the differences could impact admissions.<br>
In our schools, the scale is as follows - </p>
<p>A - 93 - 100
B - 85 - 92
C - 75 - 84
D - 70 - 74
F - 69 and under</p>
<p>I've seen some kid's posting that they made an 80 and had a low B in a class. Here, obviously, that's a middle C. </p>
<p>I know that Emory, for instance, recalculates high school transcripts on an 90-100, 80-89, etc. scale. Are there any other schools doing that?
I am curious, because using that scale, my son has a 3.85 unweighted. Using ours, he has a 3.75. That's a significant difference in my mind, for both admissions and merit aid.</p>
<p>D’s HS give numerical grades. No letters assigned. I guess that way a college can see that the grade is what it is. For me I like that, as IMO a 90 vs a 100 is very different and to give both a staight A does not seem right. On the transcripts the grade earned is reflected, yet when calculating GPA for rank, they use a factor of 1.15 for honors classes so a 100 would equal 115 and 1.29 for AP classes, with a 100 yielding a 129. The person who was # 1 last year had a GPA of around 110.something. In D’s class this year, #1 is holding a 113+</p>
<p>We also just use numbers. A 95 is a 3.5 in a regular class and a 4.5 in a weighted class. I’m always weirded out to read kids say they have a 4.0 uw; in my distict, that would mean you made a 100 in every single class, and I don’t see how that’s possible.</p>
<p>I think a numerical system makes the most sense. Though I’m always a bit mind-boggled to read about kids with 118 averages who place just out of the academic top ten. :)</p>
<p>Our hs has a truly bizarre system that I don’t believe is even mathematically viable. Grades are not weighted; however, an A-plus is assigned a value of 5.5. The breakdown:</p>
<p>A+ 5.5 97-100
A 5.0-5.49 93-96
A- 4.5-4.99 90-92
B+ 4.0-4.9 87-89
B 3.5-3.9 83-86
B- 3.0-3.49 80-82
Etc.
D 1.0-1.49 65-69
F 0.0-.99 below 65 </p>
<p>You’d think we have massive grade inflation if we need a 5.5, but not really - no kid has scored in that range since I’ve been reading the school profile (about a dozen years now!). Most of the grades are clustered in the B-plus range and the overall grade picture skews lower than that (more kids are B students and lower than A- and higher; only about 5-6 percent of kids each year are in the A range). Last year 10 out of 350 or so seniors had D or F averages.</p>
<p>My condolences to the adcoms who have to wade through and somehow interpret a zillion different grading scales.</p>
<p>While theoretically 90-100 is an A in our district, only numbers appear on the transcript and the GPA (both weighted and unweighted) is reported as a number. It’s up to colleges to decide how to translate that into a 4.0 scale if they want to. I think for my kids, the real benefit was their class rank - especially for the younger one who ranked higher than one might expect for someone with a B+ average in their academic classes.</p>
<p>Studies have shown that it doesn’t really make that much difference if schools use a 92-100 for an A instead of a 90-100. Most teachers have an idea about how many A’s they want to give out and adjust their test difficulty and/or subjective grading accordingly.</p>
<p>Same sentiments here I saw a post here a while back (I think it was a thread about valedictorians) that said the so and so school awards valedictorian status to every kid that earns 4.0 and that it is usually a seizable group. Boy, those kids will be up for cruel awakening when they hit college ;)</p>
<p>The high schools schools send profiles of how their grading system works. They also sent grade distributions, % of kids that take APs & honors, etc.</p>
<p>Getting 97% and an A is trivial if the tests and grading are easy, for example if half the class can get this kind of score. Getting 70% and an A (as it was in my high school) is not so easy if only 10% of the class can get it. </p>
<p>Class rank is more helpful to distinguish these cases. And standardized subject tests (or externally normed courses such as IB).</p>
<p>Our school just uses 0-100 for every assignment and grade (although some schools in our state apparently don’t give below a 50). I have never understood all the crazy grading scales. But grades are sometimes subjective anyway (English lit, choir, PE, etc), so I put much more emphasis on standardized tests as a measure of how my kid is doing compared to the rest of the country.</p>
<p>Yeah, don’t get too hung up on grades and percentages. Class rank is more important, especially if you’re applying to more selective schools. (Large state schools often have numerical cutoffs; more selective schools are more inclined to look at the “whole person,” making more nuanced judgments based on course load, high school reputation, etc.)</p>
<p>Anyway, my son’s math-and-science magnet school used the simple 90=A, 80=B, 70=C, 60=D.</p>
<p>I think it’s stupid to have a school-wide grading scale anyway. If a teacher wants to make the tests so hard that 50 is an A, why not?</p>
<p>Our school has standard 90+ is an A, 80+ is a B etc. unweighted for any Honors AP, </p>
<p>Except: For honors math, 92+ is needed for an A. So not only do you cover harder material, you also need to do better to get an A in honors/AP while getting no additional benefit from doing all that (other than academic). Makes great sense, doesn’t it.</p>
<p>The numerical values of any letter grades are really unimportant. Any grade really only has context within the teacher or school, and the same scale within each school will be applied to all students. </p>
<p>Teachers at my school could use whatever scale they wanted, but the most typical was:</p>
<p>93-100 - A
90-93 - A-
87-90 - B+
83-87 - B
80-83 - B-
And so on…</p>
<p>The actual breakdown of what percent got what varied hugely from teacher to teacher.</p>
<p>I don’t think the grading scale - eg 90=A, 80=B, etc. necesarily correlates directly with percent. It is just another way of representing class performance.</p>
<p>If in a class the top students average 70% on the work, the teacher will then translate that into a “90” for the final grade, much in the same way a tracher would label it an “A” in another grading system. Getting a “90” doesn’t mean, or require that the students average 90% on the exams. At least that’s how I think it is, and how it should be.</p>
<p>Maybe it should be like that, but I know my S has had several honors/AP classes where grades were not scaled. If the top scoring student got a 75% on a test, that was his grade for the test, it was not scaled to an A.</p>
You don’t necessarily have to do it for each test. You get a ranking in the class afterwards and then assign the final numbers based on ranking of cumulative test scores.</p>
<p>So nobody in the class got an A (or 90) for the overall grade? 75 was the highest overall grade in the class? They gave your son a 75 for the class? That’s not correct IMO. But I think it’s pretty rare.</p>
I saw a post here a while back (I think it was a thread about valedictorians) that said the so and so school awards valedictorian status to every kid that earns 4.0 and that it is usually a seizable group. Boy, those kids will be up for cruel awakening when they hit college ;)</p>