<p>My S high school only calculates a UW GPA. There is not weight for honors or AP classes except for a more generous curve. I often think about what are their motives. </p>
<p>I think this behavior penalizes kids that are willing to challenge themselves with a more rigorous HS curriculum. As often happens you see kids that have taken only regular courses with a higher GPA and higher school ranking. Many universities only take the highest reported GPA for their admissions consideration or consider those kids that are ranked in the top 10% in their class. Under that scenario less prepared kids will have better chances to be admitted that one that has worked hard thru high school to prepare for college.</p>
<p>It also affects the chances of kids getting scholarships. We have found that many scholarships take in consideration the highest reported GPA UW or Weighted.</p>
<p>My theory is that the school systems do that to not penalize kids that heavily involved in band and sports to keep participation high...</p>
<p>Many college admissions offices recalculate weighted GPA using their own weighing schemes so even if it’s not on the transcript, the colleges will calculate it anyway.</p>
<p>My kids H.S. did not weight GPA’s.The official transcript clearly stated the fact.Both kids were major scholarship recipients at their respective colleges, so the non weighted GPA wasn’t a problem .</p>
<p>Our school doesn’t weight grades and doesn’t offer a more generous curve for tougher classes. Personally I’d like to see class rank eliminated. While my kids have chosen extremely academically rigorous courses, I can also see value in kids choosing to go with lots of music courses, for example. I’d love to see kids pursue the classes that are the best fit for their goals and interests without fear of impact on rank.</p>
<p>(Disclaimer: At our school some classes such as music ones are easy to As in. I realize this may not be the same at all schools.)</p>
<p>Our high school doesn’t weight either. It was never a problem either for scholarships or getting into the elite schools. It did encourage kids to take classes that they were interested in and not focus solely on a GPA.</p>
<p>Many really good high schools do not weight; they do give a detailed school/class profile though so that kids with APs and honors designations next to their grades get full credit for having challenged themselves. Most colleges re-weight GPA anyway, basing their calculations on the UW GPA and then assigning their own uniform weight to the course level. (I am sure there are high schools that neither weight nor explain, and I’m sure that can be frustrating–but I would assume that most selective colleges are pretty experienced at figuring out what a rigorous transcript looks like).</p>
<p>Highschools I’m familiar with do not weight. It does not affect anyone negatively as far as I can tell. The highschools make clear that they are sending unweighted grades and do not curve, and colleges recalculate it if they so wish. In a sense it is more fair because it provides raw data which is more interpretable.</p>
<p>MY hs was the same way in that we only had an uw GPA. Colleges recognize the fact that not all schools have the same grading system and adjust accordingly.</p>
<p>Sorry, but a lot of you are incorrect about the effect of the system the OP has described. My kids’ high schools did not weight grades and did not take honors and AP courses into account when determining rank. Since the high schools are very diverse and include many kids who take no AP and no honors as well as those that take very rigorous course loads, the top 5% is full of goof offs and even very good students may not make the top 10%. </p>
<p>The situation has finally become untenable, as many students have been shut out of automatic merit scholarships for kids in the top 5% at many colleges. Public universities, even very well known ones, do not sit there and try to guess whether or not a student would have been top 5% if the schools calculated rank differently.</p>
<p>The school board and administration have decided to eliminate rank altogether starting next year.</p>
<p>My kids’ high school wouldn’t weight grades until the public universities announced that they would no longer recalculate GPA; they would take whatever is on the transcript. That started making a serious difference scholarship-wise.</p>
<p>^^ WOW! Even schools that weight GPA do it differently. Some count A in AP class as 4.5, others as 5, yet others as 6. UofM is comparing apples to oranges.</p>
<p>Midmo, that is good. The highschools I know that do not weight grades also have never ranked. I think that is an important element that should go hand in hand.</p>
<p>About half of colleges recalculate GPA according to a NACAC survey. No real pattern to which do and which don’t; search these threads or ask colleges yourself. Kids pursuing high academic track with unweighted GPAs can lose out with colleges that don’t recalculate and use rank. Some HSs SAY they don’t rank (yet do internally and will release under certain circumstances like for service academy applications). Even if HSs don’t release rank, some colleges can closely guess it from other information sent by the HS (such as GPA distribution within the class), and wrongly assume that GPAs higher than the applicant’s were for students on the same AP track, since they don’t usually see transripts from every (or even any) student who outranks the applicant. Unweighted also hurts because the GPAs are lower than from HSs that do weight, and some admits/scholarships/honors programs applications are based on the GPA sent by the HS.</p>
<p>About half of colleges recalculate GPA according to a NACAC survey. No real pattern to which do and which don’t; search these threads or ask colleges yourself. Kids pursuing high academic track with unweighted GPAs can lose out with colleges that don’t recalculate and use rank. Some HSs SAY they don’t rank (yet do internally and will release under certain circumstances like for service academy applications). Even if HSs don’t release rank, some colleges can closely guess it from other information sent by the HS (such as GPA distribution within the class), and wrongly assume that GPAs higher than the applicant’s were for students on the same AP track, since they don’t usually see transripts from every (or even any) student who outranks the applicant. Unweighted also hurts because the GPAs are lower than from HSs that do weight, and some admits/scholarships/honors programs applications are based on the GPA sent by the HS.</p>
<p>The flagship state U my D attends uses the GPA on the transcript for merit scholarship eligibility - weighted or not. It almost cost us a $15K scholarship, as her HS did not weight. Fortunately, they were willing to work with her guidance counselor, and determined that by including freshman year grades, her GPA made the cut.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the principal who supports this policy pompously claims colleges know how rigorous the school is, blah, blah. When 20,000 kids are applying, this is not very persuasive.</p>
<p>Midmo and ProxyGC, you guys understood exactly my point. The problem is that doing ranking on UW GPA only is priving excellent kids from getting access to good scholarships. As many universities are moving to not recalculate GPA, and/or not seriously consider kids over a certain school rank % this is getting very critical.
Drb, you are lucky that your D university was willing to work with you and your counselor. Like you mentioned when a top or flagship unversity get thousands and thousands of applications they don’t have the vissibility on how each school district works their ranking or GPA’s.</p>
<p>It is a very sad situation and a lot of kids are missing good opportuniites and money.</p>
<p>I wonder if the colleges could send letters to pressure schools to also present W GPA’s. I would also get rid of school rankings all together. As somebody mentioned above the school body is so diverse that you’ll never could establish a fair ranking system.</p>
<p>OTOH many that don’t take APs might feel that the weighted grades give way too much boost to those taking AP classes where most kids get A’s. That’s why many schools weight the tests more for doling out money. Very hard to compare grades from different schools.</p>