<p>mathyone,
I understand your concerns, but I am not sure there is a system that is fair to everyone, at least not one I can envision.</p>
<p>When I spoke to my son’s GC prior to 9th grade he told me point blank that if S continued to take both Band and Chorus throughout school he would not graduate in a top spot. Music classes are unweighted and it isn’t possible to compete with nonmusic students that take weighted classes instead.</p>
<p>Some schools around here still don’t weight at all for ranking. The theory is that the best students will still end up on top, but in the case of my niece’s graduation class last year, the Sal never took an AP class and is attending a CC. My niece took every AP offered and fortunately ended up as Val or I think you would have been reading about my SIL on the news!</p>
<p>I think the unfortunate aspect of weighting is that kids have to make choices on the classes they take based on whether or not the course is weighted, and the impact it will have on GPA.</p>
<p>Hmm. I would think that any program that requires a certain average to demonstrate academic excellence would also require that it be earned in the most rigorous classes possible.</p>
<p>Some high schools have the profile on their websites. At others, you need to ask the counseling office. A few CC posters have said their counselors didn’t want to give out the profile, but they’re the exception.</p>
<p>If you don’t like what you see…ask if you can help them retool their profile. I did this a few years back for D1’s school, because the counselors didn’t have time to do it and I had a whole bunch of example profiles I’d gathered from other academically rigorous high schools. Win-win for everyone: that year’s class had a noticeable uptick in admissions and the school had a handy-dandy summary of their academic prowess to use with e.g. the local school board.</p>
<p>There’ve been many CC discussions about if colleges recalculate GPA using their own scheme. Bottom line: some do, some don’t. Isn’t that useful? ;)</p>
<p>We have the same issues here with ranking and our district recently decided to stop reporting rank beginning with the class of 2015. Unfortunately for my D, she is a senior this year. As others have mentioned, the system works against those who choose arts over study hall. My D is lucky that she will still be top 1-2%, but she would not “play the game” and take study hall over wind ensemble to increase her GPA. While I applaud her choice, it can be a very difficult decision for some. A friend was talking to me about his D who is hovering around the 10% mark and applying to a college where that’s a magic number to screen for merit aid (for kids in schools that report rank!).</p>
<p>We don’t have any academic scholarships for valedictorians or 4.0 averages so they aren’t under any such pressures. (But also aren’t getting any such money, sigh.) My daughter was in an unusual position and could have arranged a schedule to guarantee that she would be valedictorian if that had been her goal. But neither of us would trade her music classes and other challenges she took just for that title. It would have been tough for her if there had been a large scholarship for valedictorians at stake.</p>
<p>If a lot of schools aren’t reporting the 10%, does that disqualify those students for those merit aid opportunities?</p>
<p>Our school doesn’t report rank routinely. With no weighting and straight simple grading it looks like ‘rank 1, shared by 20.’ But they will do so by request if particular colleges need that.</p>
<p>And I am so happy we didn’t have to agonize over whether D should take band or S woodworking. These are not good systems that force kids and parents to think of those as anything other than positive life-enhancing decisions.</p>
<p>At my son’s HS all honors, AP and IB courses are weighted +1. Even though there are certain state/local class mandates, some of those can be skipped by involvement in sports or taking on-line classes. A year or so before my son graduated, a girl who ran track and cross-country graduated with a 4.95 GPA. She must have taken all honors, AP or IB courses and was able to avoid all but one unweighted grades in gym, health, and a “practical subject”.</p>
<p>My son graduated with a 4.0 unweighted and about 4.75 weighted. He took almost all honors, AP and IB classes. But because he loved singing, he took at least one music class every semester, a year of non-honors language (because he wanted to learn another foreign language), and only waived two of the required five state/local classes. As a result he was either just within or just without the top 5%. He didn’t care about being Val or Sal. (The Val reminded all of the parents of Jeff Spicoli.)</p>
<p>I think that, in my son’s case, class standing was much less important than the unweighted GPA and the rigor of classes taken (including the IB diploma studies). I am sure that the GC marked the “most rigorous” box on the college forms. I think that the Public Universities are more concerned with class rank and weighted GPAs than Private Universities (especially Top 50 ones). My son only applied to two Publics - BSU and UMich and both were considered as safeties. He got into all but two of the Private Us that he applied to and all of the Private Us were Top 25 schools.</p>
<p>First, it’s been my experience that colleges don’t care about the weighted GPA at all - they calculate a GPA based on core courses or whatever they deem important and then add a score for rigor. </p>
<p>The exceptions I am aware of are qualifying for automatic scholarships or acceptance at certain public colleges in our state - the weighted GPA can be used to meet those requirements. Insofar as weighted GPA influences class rank, that can matter too.</p>
<p>My kids’ high school has not had weight or rank for many years. The thinking was that kids should take hard courses because they want to, and selective colleges see that they did when they see the transcript. No val or sal, any interested student can submit an app to speak and two are chosen.</p>
<p>This year, in response to parental concerns about those automatic scholarships/accepts from public universities, they have brought weighting back, and rank too.</p>
<p>Our max UW GPA is 4.0. A weight of +1 is given to a B- or higher in any AP course. AP courses exist in every subject so an English/Social Studies kid can do just as well as a math/science kid as far as weighting goes. We do not have Honors or IB, we do have frosh/soph courses labeled “pre-AP” which are somewhat harder/faster but they aren’t weighted.</p>
<p>I don’t know if D will know her rank or not.</p>
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<p>Our HS has it on the school web site. I’m sure you can ask for a copy if your school doesn’t put it online.</p>
<p>In our school AP and DE classes get 1 extra point, Honors get .5 extra. Class rank is based on weighted, but Academic Honors are based on unweighted. That way the top students in vocational school are recognized for excellence as well.
We know the top 15 students because they have a special awards banquet for them and a photo on the wall. The school puts class rank on the annual transcript, and will report rank as of end of junior year to colleges.
Weighted rank is a big deal in our state because IU gives merit aid based on weighted scores.</p>
<p>Some schools give pass fail grades for electives and put a cap on the number of honors classes. Students thus can’t stack up academics merely for the sake of GPA rather than educational value. Pass/fail for electives means students might take and enjoy arts and similar classes without affecting their hard work in other classes.</p>
<p>Our district weights 1.0 for AP and only .25 for Honors. Also, our schools do not report rank. Weighted GPA is on the transcript but several colleges we have visited indicated that they recalculate GPAs “unweighted” to level the field among the different high schools represented.</p>
<p>I am thinking from all this info that probably the most fair (though by no means perfect) system is to weight the grades, either +1 for all or maybe +.5 for honors and +1 for AP, but exclude from a weighted average those classes for which there is no choice of levels. If the school doesn’t offer an honors class, it’s not fair to penalize the student for taking the regular level. But some weighting I think is necessary to avoid having kids who don’t take the harder classes get the top places. I think grading electives pass/fail invites abuse, but including them in a weighted average penalizes artsy kids and those who choose more electives over study halls.</p>
<p>Late to the thread, but my kids’ school does not weight. This is a historical thing based primarily on the fact that the University of Michigan until just a year or so ago, only looked at unweighted GPAs so our school accommodated by only using unweighted scores on the transcripts. UofM now will accept weighted GPAs, so I’m wondering if our district will change things up.</p>
<p>No weighting for honors. No weighting for most DE. +1 for AP, but there are only 8 of them. Most of the weighted GPAs tossed around on cc by kids (and parents of said kids) in rigorous, ranked highs schools aren’t possible at our urban public. I’m not sure our school profile would be very impressive anywhere. But, kids still do get in to brand name schools.</p>
<p>If you’re at a Lake Wobegone school (where all the children are above average) and everybody takes honors/AP/IB/LMNOP classes, there doesn’t seem to be much point in weighting. There’s no reason why you’d need to reward kids who are all after the “most rigorous” check box. They’ll take the toughest courses on their own.</p>
<p>@ordinary, I think that is generally true, but sometimes it doesn’t work out that way, and especially if there is a large scholarship going to the valedictorian it’s a bit unfair to give it to someone who opted out of the hard classes.</p>
<p>Our high school gives the profiles to juniors, I’m sure they’d give it to anyone who asked earlier. Our high school doesn’t rank “non-academic” courses which helps, except that band, orchestra and chorus are counted as academic! (Health and gym aren’t.) For my younger son who took two orchestras courses every year and got 99s or 100s it actually upped his GPA even though they weren’t weighted. Since you don’t even learn your rank till senior year, we never paid much attention to it. I always assumed my oldest would be amongst the top students and he was. I thought my younger son would have a lower rank than he did.</p>
;)</p>