High school with no uniformity in grading policies

Applying to College
1

<p>I am angry. My son, who has 2200+ SAT scores and mid-700s on 2 subject tests and a relatively low GPA (3.6) with a tough load of classes at a well-known upscale community public high school, has been deferred from the college of his choice. It is well known among the students at his high school that for many courses, your grade depends more on luck of the draw with teachers than on your accomplishments.
For example, in AP English Language and Composition, one teacher gave only 2, maybe 3 students As first semester and only a few more As second semester (out of a class of about 35 students). He also gave a few Cs first semester, but these students dropped to regular English classes second semester. (A few students, knowing they did not have a prayer of getting As and might even wind up with Cs, dropped to regular English classes at the very beginning of the year.) At least one other teacher with multiple sections of the course awarded over 50% As (some say 75% As). Except for the very top students, all of whom are bound for HPY, Stanford, or MIT (or, possibly, Williams or Amherst), the grade a student receives in AP English Language and Composition at my son's school depends more on the teacher than on student ability. The same was true in 10th grade English as well as in some courses in other departments, but to a lesser extent.
I spoke to the principal about this problem when my son was in 11th grade. He did not deny that a problem exists, but he told me that colleges look at grades holistically, and my son's excellent standardized test scores will show the colleges that he is a good student.
Now that we are in the middle of the college application process, and my son has received a deferral from the college of his choice, I am absolutely livid. I do not get the sense that colleges, concerned about US News and World Report rankings, truly look holistically at applications. A representative from the school my son wants to attend visited his high school a few months ago and bluntly said that the school wants to see GPAs of 3.8. Students at my son's high school earn national awards in academic-related extracurricular activities such as speech and debate and publications and my son is one of them. (I don't want to name his specific activity.)
My impression is that colleges look first at high school GPA and then they consider whether SAT scores. Without the magic number for the GPA, students are rarely considered. For Ivies, upper middle class students at public high schools are expected to have national standing in some activity, but national ranking in some sort of academic extra-curricular activity and high standardized test scores do not compensate for a slightly low GPA at prestigious LACs.
For the record, I support efforts to enroll veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I believe that first generation college students should not be held to the same standard as my son. However, I am adamantly opposed to the efforts of elite colleges to seek out foreign students and, in many cases, award them scarce financial aid dollars when so many qualified Americans are not being admitted and are struggling to pay exorbitant fees. </p>

<p>I understand that the SATs are culturally biased, but when you judge students from similar backgrounds, I find that they mean a whole lot more than GPAs. You cannot even necessarily compare the GPAs of two students from the same high school.</p>

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<p>Colleges will see that your son had a hard courseload. If your son was rejected, it’s not of that GPA difference between your son and those kids who switch out of hard courses.</p>

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<p>I am a senior in high school about to head to college in the fall and I completely agree with you. I am deeply sorry for your son’s deferral and I hope he finds a college he will love. As for the gpa/sat thing, I agree that gpa is looked at more heavily than the sat when it should be the reverse. Colleges will always claim the saying “we care more about what you did in 4 years than what you did in 4 hours.” However I feel this statement isn’t very accurate. You can’t build critical thinking and analytical skills over the course of a few months and apply them perfectly on a 4 hour test. The SAT, while many say does not test intelligence like it should, reflects year of reading and comprehending as well as logical thinking that you can only build by dissecting concepts and problems over and over again. Grades are insanely inflated to the point where every other kid has a 4.2. Back 20 or 30 years ago many more policies schools were graded on curves as opposed to an explicit scale. If more schools were like this you could identify the top 2 or 3 students immediately instead of having to flush through hundreds of students over 4.0 who get these grades from teachers who give out As for busywork that doesn’t measure how well the student knows the material. The problem over teachers who grade differently i fear will not be solved anytime soon. If you have any younger children who have to face the college admissions process in the future I recommend they choose their classes not only by their interests, but by the quality of the teachers, so they don’t end up with your son’s dilemma where some students are unfairly punished forgetting the wrong teacher. </p>

<p>Again, I am sorry for your son’s deferral. In today’s college admissions process, people are forced to work the system in their favor. The hyper inflated grades and miserable teachers are unfortunately given more weight than standardized tests, which are designed to level the playing field and I’d which kids are truly smart and which aren’t, hence “standardized”. I wish the best of luck to you and your son and I hope he ends up in the right place. :)</p>

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<p>I get the sense in your post that you feel like either the high school or dream institution ‘owe’ you a college acceptance. The fact of the matter is that neither one owes you or your son a thing, and that even with fantastic SAT scores, students are routinely deferred from highly selective schools, even with higher SAT scores and GPAs. When I received a deferral to my first-choice highly-selective school, I was extremely disappointed, but I would not have described myself as angry at either my school or the college-- being angry implies that you have been done an injustice, and the entire college admissions process at highly selective schols is just a lottery game in chance, and there are no promises, not even for a student with x scores or y activites, and there is no way to predict admissions-- and for every student who gets admission, two or three highly deserving students are denied.</p>

<p>If the grading scheme at your high school is truly as you describe, I would schedule a meeting with the guidance counselor and ask her to include an explanation of the variance in grades to colleges along with the mid-year report, which she should be sending out now. But you and your son knew the GPA when the admissions process startd, and hopefully there are a number more schools that y’all applied to well within range of both the SAT and GPA. Good luck.</p>

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<p>The HS transcript is the single best predictor for all measures of success in college. SAT and ACT scores are not good predictors in and of themselves, and when combined with GPA make only a minuscule improvement for prediction. Every college admissions officer in the country knows that. For links to the research see [The</a> National Center for Fair & Open Testing | FairTest](<a href=“http://www.fairtest.org%5DThe”>http://www.fairtest.org)</p>

<p>Yes, it is unfortunate that the OPs child has had the “tough teachers”, but clearly those teachers have reputations that precede them, and students are able to drop the classes, petition for transfer to different sections, or seek help from the teachers in order to perform at a level the teacher deems adequate.</p>

<p>There are plenty of colleges and universities out there that would be happy to have the OPs child as a student - some that would be willing to offer significant merit aid in fact. This student needs to kick dream school to the curb, and go find himself a better future.</p>

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<p>I’ve been in:
Chem class where I had the highest grade (a 79)
Algebra II where only 4 people passed
German class where I had the 3rd highest grade (a 70)</p>

<p>I got over it and I think you need to as well.</p>

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<p>RoyceSox: I hope I can tell you in a few months that you are correct, at least in my son’s case, but I suspect the main concern of colleges in the admissions process is to keep their statistics high for rankings.</p>

<p>LiquidBonn: I wish you the best of luck in college admissions. Thanks for your support. I agree with everything you say. Some people would argue that the SATs are unfair to students who don’t test well, but I always thought my son was one of them. My wife complained to the principal about his math teacher last year, and the math teacher proceeded to make my son’s life miserable. Nothing we could do. He was the only one in the class who received an A on the final who got a B in the course. His 750 score on on the SAT II is a much more accurate assessment of his abilities. His current AP Calculus teacher, who gave him one of a very few As in the class first semester this year, loves him. When my son received the deferral with a letter inviting him to submit more documentation in support of his application, his current teacher agreed to write a letter of recommendation. Hopefully, it will help.</p>

<p>Purpleacorn: I don’t feel anyone “owes” my son an acceptance, but I certainly do feel that the high school owes him a fair chance, which he has not received. I am much angrier at the high school than I am at the college. A major problem at my son’s high school is that the best teachers in the school have complete contempt for the principal and think he is an idiot. The principal has been completely unable to rally his teachers around him and set policies. My son had to complete a brag packet for his guidance counselor, and he reminded her that he had had all the toughest teachers in the school and that he had never shirked when he was placed in those teachers’ classes. Did she include this information in her recommendation? I don’t know. I worry that the colleges might be viewing my son as a very capable student who is satisfied with Bs and is not trying his hardest. If information about tough teachers was not communicated to the colleges, I would not be able to blame them. My son’s English teacher, the one who gave him Bs, asked to write his letter of recommendation for him, saying it would be very easy to write. (My son used to make very wise contributions to class discussions, but participation did not count in the grade.) Did the teacher let the colleges know that my son was a borderline A/B student? Did he tell the colleges that he has a reputation as the toughest grader in the school? I don’t know. But the colleges might very well be aware of the situation and might be more concerned about their rankings. I have no way of knowing.</p>

<p>Barrk123: I don’t know whether you are a student or a parent, but if you are a student, you are spending an incredible amount of precious time on College Confidential. If so, no wonder you have low grades. One of my son’s friends is one of the top 20 students in chemistry in the US. He surely would have done better than you did in your chemistry class and would have gotten the A. Maybe neither you nor any of your classmates deserved the high grades. At my son’s school, a community public high school with a wide range of students, at least a few students every year score 2400 on the SATs in one sitting. We have moved around a lot, but until we moved to our current location 3 years ago, I could never imagine such a talented group of hard working kids.</p>

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<p>Conspiracy theories abound regarding admissions to selective colleges.</p>

<p>Assuming that your son’s high school is welll known, the regional representative in admissions would have a good sense of courses, teachers and grades.</p>

<p>Check out the Naviance statistics for your son’s high school. What are the grades and scores of previous applicants to selective colleges – i.e. scattergraphs of scores and grades of admitted students and rejected students. My sense is that you’ll confirm for yourself the harsh reality of admissions to very selective colleges.</p>

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<p>Many do look holistically, but the super-selective ones typically have large numbers of applicants compressed into the top ranges of HS GPA and test scores. Anything lower stands out in a bad way. But merely being in the top ranges just means having a non-trivial chance of admission (which is still quite low and not very predictable at many of these super-selective colleges) through whatever holistic process they use.</p>

<p>Every student should have a safety school in his/her application list that s/he likes.</p>

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<p>Note that 750 on the SAT Subject Math Level 2 test is about the 75th percentile. Granted, it is a self-selected group of students (those who completed precalculus 11th grade or earlier, meaning the better at math students), but it does mean that there are large numbers of students better than he is at math. This may be a detriment if he applied to a super-selective school listing a math-based major as his intended major.</p>

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<p>Note that for US rankings, however, only the measure of whether or not the student is within the top ten percent is taken into consideration (see [here](<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2012/09/11/how-us-news-calculates-its-best-colleges-rankings?page=3]here[/URL]”>http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2012/09/11/how-us-news-calculates-its-best-colleges-rankings?page=3)</a>), not necessarily mean GPA. Fogcity is right in that selective college admissions is a harsh reality, and many students who are well-credentialed and at the top in their own communities are not offered admissions.</p>

<p>I’d again encourage your son to share these concerns with the counselor himself and ask for the clarification in his mid-year report. This has been the first year that counselors have been able to not complete a narrative report (either because they do not sufficiently know the student or because they have too large a counseling load), and even a recommendation completed via brag-packet may be largely quanitative and very rote. My guidance counselor (I now attend a very small school) explained a number of things on my transcript in her addition in my mid-year report, including credit distributions and honors availability at my school. If your son is applying common-app at any of the schools, the counselor will have to complete a MYR anyways, and if she hasn’t submitted it, it can’t hurt to ask if she will include the information on uneven grade distributions for admissions officers who read the file. However, it’s entirely possible that even with a 4.0 GPA, your son still would have been deferred-- such is college admissions.</p>

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<p>LividDad- your reply to barrk123 was very rude, FYI.
And that’s just how college admissions go. Someone has to get deferred or denied. You have to admit that your opinion of your son’s credentials are extremely biased, and there may be another reason for his deferral other than GPA. His essay may have been subpar, or his application as a whole may not have stood out. I wish the best to your son, but neither the college not the high school deserves your anger, because it is unwarranted. I had the most difficult teachers all throughout high school, and even though their grading techniques may not have been seen as fair, it is something my classmates and I have had to deal with. My school is extremely rigorous as well- I attend one of the top math and science public schools in the nation. The fact of the matter is that your son got deferred, not rejected- there is still hope. And even if he does get rejected then it is what it is. With his credentials he will be accepted to some school. Do you know how many people on CC do not get into their top choices because they are so selective? A lot. So I have no other response other than to deal with it, and stop trying to take your anger out on the high school. The teachers grading practices may be unfair but life is unfair, to a degree. And I don’t agree with the SAT being the best indicator of success. Even if a students GPA is low, their class rank will reveal how they compare to others within the context of their school, and that is what colleges look for. Colleges can’t directly compare students from different schools because different schools have different resources and opportunities. Colleges look at the student holistically within the context of their school (usually only when it comes to numbers.) you said it yourself- the SAT is culturally biased and there are many other flaws. I scored a 2090 with very minimal studying from a book, while some of my classmates (who are smarter and have a better work ethic) scored much lower because the SAT was not something that they were accustomed to, and it is not an accurate predictor of intelligence, nor success.</p>

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<p>LividDad, I’m sure you’ve done a lot of excellent parenting over the years, and this is the time to do some more. Instead of being in a rage over the high school’s grading inconsistencies (which you’ve obviously known about for some time, just as you’ve known about your son’s less than stellar GPA, which raises the question of why so shocked now?–but I digress), put all that energy into helping your son supplement his application to the extent appropriate, counseling him that being too invested in one college choice is a foolish path, encouraging him to become more knowledgeable and enthusiastic about his other choices, so he can be excited when he receives their acceptance letters, and reminding him that his happiness and success at college will depend far more on his attitude and effort than on the identity of the school. And please don’t share your anger with your son. It will only make him focus on the negative things in his past that he can’t change, instead of all the wonderful things in his future.</p>

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<p>I agree with Jazmine, that was extremely rude. A teacher is a horrible teacher if the highest grade was a 79. College grading is just as much of a crapshoot, so you need to tell your son to get used to grading that changes wildly depending on professor.</p>

<p>Also, what college is this? You don’t need to be cryptic, you aren’t giving anything away by saying where he applied. If it’s ivy, or around that level, then you can’t blame the GPA, they don’t even accept 10% for the most part. If the school is really that well-known, then the school has probably had students apply from there, and they either realize that the grading is harder/wonky, or they realize that your son didn’t do as well as those with higher grades. It’s one or the other, and either way, it’s the same way it would have worked out otherwise.</p>

<p>I don’t mean to sound harsh, but there is no reason to lash out at someone else because you’re mad your son didn’t get an acceptance.</p>

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<p>Deferral is not the loss that a rejection is. AND, * admissions is not all about stats.* Sheesh. Or maybe we need to know the sort of college this is, to understand if it’s highly competitive and using the Common App, which means it’s holistic.</p>

<p>My impression is that colleges look first at high school GPA and then they consider whether SAT scores. Without the magic number for the GPA… Well for a CA (Common App) school, generally: Nope. Believe it or not, their minds can absorb the whole picture. </p>

<p>Understand that when kids and parents focus so intently on stats, they miss the critical part about how important the rest of the app is. I’m going to stick my neckout here and call it a major potential pitfall.</p>

<p>As for GC details: if the hs is well known- and if there has beena history of kids appplying to that college- the adcoms likely know of its idiosyncracies, maybe even it’s political issues. Often even down to particular LoR writers. </p>

<p>some x-posting. Agree, there are a zillion reasons why a kid will be deferred. Help your son gain perspective.</p>

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<p>Maybe I over-reacted to Barrk123, and I am sorry, but I thought he/she was far from polite, too. He/she provided a listing with incomplete explanations of wrongs done to her/him and then bluntly said to me, “get over it”. Really? Was that necessary?</p>

<p>I just opened my account on CC yesterday, and I do not feel comfortable naming the college. I have looked at some posts and am convinced a college admissions officer would easily be able to identify some of the applicants. I shudder to realize how identifiable some posts on CC must be. However, I will say that my son’s SAT scores are within 10 points of the college’s 75th percentile, he wants to attend a LAC, and he is undecided about a major . His GPA is very slightly above 3.6 and with straight As except for one B this semester (with 5 AP courses), his overall GPA jumps up to something like 3.65+. I attribute his success this past semester to better teachers. His A in AP English Lit is probably due to a combination of having a slightly easier teacher and having learned a lot in earlier years from tough, demanding teachers. </p>

<p>We live in California, and most of my son’s friends are Asian. (We are white.) The top students all want to go to big name Ivies and Ivy equivalents, and most feel that if they cannot attend a university their families back in China will recognize, they will attend a UC. Students have turned down Williams to attend a top UC, because their parents think an Ivy is worth the cost but Williams is not. Many also want engineering programs that are not available at LACs. Consequently, very few students from my son’s school have applied to the schools my son is considering, which definitely rank lower than Williams. In the last 5 years, only one student has gone to the school my son has chosen as his first choice. We visited this student when we went on a college tour, and she told us that she had received straight As first semester of freshman year. As for the Naviance graph, it is unreliable. Just a few students have applied and the pattern is very random. You have to wonder if top students were rejected because the college did not think they would attend. My son hoped that with an ED advantage, he would be admitted. We also hoped the student from his high school who is now at the college and is very happy might have “paved the way” for others from the high school. Of note, the admissions officer said during the visit that she knew this student. Unfortunately, she also said that she was new on the job, and my son did not get the sense that she understood the calibre of the school. The college wants to see a 3.8, but most students with 3.8 GPAs, especially those who have taken a very competitive schedule of classes and have high SAT scores, feel they have a chance at higher ranked schools. </p>

<p>My son has applied to a wide range of schools on our insistence, but when we try to tell him that he might not wind up at one of the schools he really wants to attend, he accuses my wife of not believing he’s smart enough. Oy.</p>

<p>I suspect that most colleges assume that when you have two students from the same high school, the one who received more As must be smarter and more diligent than the other one. That’s problematic at my son’s school. The school is great because of the kids and some great teachers (including some of the toughest graders), but there is no real leadership. </p>

<p>Thank you purpleacorn for your suggestion that maybe his guidance counselor could include an additional statement when she sends out his first semester grades (probably next week). As lookingforward says, maybe he will eventually be accepted. Despite applying ED to one school, my son has a few top choices and would be happy at any of them. He’s just feeling very discouraged.</p>

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<p>LividDad,</p>

<p>I am a student that is now a freshman in college and was going through this process last year. Here were my stats: 35 ACT, Subject Tests: 760 Chem 780 Math II, Valedictorian, 4.0 GPA, Two time State Champion, decorated competitive power lifter, and all the other service EC’s you could think of. My goal was to go to Stanford or Cornell. I applied to Stanford Cornell Harvard Duke Vanderbilt Rice Dartmouth UC Berkley…and i got denied by all of them. I got 0 acceptance letters. My choice colleges were highly selective and you need to realize that no matter what grades or the application looks like… there is no guarantee. While grading can be tough, I went to a school were often I was the only kid in the class to receive an A, similar to what it seems like your son is in. You just have to live with it…trust me I was angry at the time too…considering a girl from my school with substantially lower scores than mine got into Cornell (she was african american). So I applied to a public university that had rolling admissions and I was accepted with a full ride academic scholarship. Life goes on and I plan to reapply to the ivies for grad/med school. Don’t worry your son will be fine wherever he ends up. </p>

<p>PS. I took 10 AP courses throughout junior/senior year… 8 at school and 2 self taught…5’d all of them.</p>

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<p>Maybe accept your son lacked the qualifications possessed by others. Blaming the school teachers? To be expected by a child not a parent.</p>

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<p>LividDad, I’m not going to comment on your frustration because it’s not my place to do so, but I recommend you take collegefailureha story with a grain of salt (ignore it at all costs).</p>

<p>If you look at his posting history, his test scores vary by 10-30 points and so do his ECs.</p>

<p>Ignore him.</p>

<p>Best of luck to your son, the college admissions process can be cruel.</p>

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<p>Normally I wouldn’t entertain a ■■■■■ such as SpaceDuck but since he accused me of lying I’ll entertain it. </p>

<p>“Varying EC’s”</p>

<p>I assume youre talking about the state titles variance…my older posts said one i believe? Well I know this may be a stretch, but there are spring sports… i.e. Baseball. We won our first title in June 2011 and the SECOND one after the college admissions process in June 2012 (And my original posts on CC). Considering apps must be submitted in DECEMBER, this is not a lie…if you want more info PM me and ill tell you our school’s name and you can google us and see us all over the net for D. II baseball. </p>

<p>Tests Scores</p>

<p>Believe it or not, you can take standardized tests more than once… and they will consider your highest scores. After being denied I had to retake the tests to be granted more scholarship… and surprise surprise I scored differently, and slightly higher. Variance on those tests of 10-30 points is a mere one or two question difference. I would post my SAT subject tests scores but can’t remember my password so I’ll post a screenshot of my act scores below:</p>

<p>[ACTPIC_zpsa70f03d8.png</a> Photo by collegefailureha | Photobucket](<a href=“http://s1300.beta.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/user/collegefailureha/media/ACTPIC_zpsa70f03d8.png.html]ACTPIC_zpsa70f03d8.png”>http://s1300.beta.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/user/collegefailureha/media/ACTPIC_zpsa70f03d8.png.html)</p>

<p>Anything else SpaceDuck?.. want a video of me smashing a 330lb benchpress or deadlifting 450lbs? Your ignorance is entertaining. </p>

<p>LividDad- I’m not lying about my experience… It’s genuine…rough but genuine. Believe me or not but I’m just warning you that select schools have no ‘Golden Ticket’ for entrance…look around on CC… all sorts of kids get denied with high stats. It’s reality and it sucks but not the end of the world…goodluck with the other school acceptances!</p>