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<p>This is exactly why our school doesn’t rank. It “forces” admissions officers to look at the actual course load.</p>
<p>Our children’s school does an odd mix. Weights for ranking (+0.5 for APs, +0.25 for Honors) but Valedictorian and Salutatorian are judged by unweighted grades. This year they handed out five awards for the top 1% and two people who were not Valedictorians (meaning no 4.0) received the awards. There were 10 other Valedictorians (13 total) who didn’t make the top 1%.</p>
<p>newmassdad: I really liked your post#35.</p>
<p>I would like to add that class rank probably gives a good sense of the student’s general ability and willingness to figure out the rules of the game in his/her own school and then succeed within those rules. </p>
<p>Some might see this trait as a positive predictor of future success- after all, we know the rules of the world aren’t all fair, and most of us want our children to ‘succeed’ in some way or the other. Others might see it as a negative character trait, especially if it seems like a student was “gaming” the system too much. In either case, it is relevant information that can add to the entire picture.</p>
<p>School only assigns weight to grades for the calculation of rank, but the official transcript is always unweighted. It used to be honors/preAP +0.5, Dual Enrollled +0.5 and AP/IB +1.0. The State of Florida now mandates to high schools that DE be the same as AP/IB (at least in the public school system), as it now is for FACTs and when State U’s in Florida calculate their own weighted GPA (core courses.)</p>
<p>Our school weights as follows -
AP/GT/Honors - 1.0 extra point
pre-AP - 1.0 extra point
Dual credit - no extra point
Regular Academic - no extra point</p>
<p>I completely understand the frustration with someone taking all regular academic classes and making straight As and ending up with a 4.0 and someone taking a mix of classes and ending up with a lower GPA.</p>
<p>This is happening with my younger son. A close friend of his has taken all academic classes, has a 4.0 and was recently inducted into the NHS (3.75 cutoff). My son has taken a mix of pre-AP and regular academic classes. Because of the additional level of difficulty, he has had a few B’s and a couple of C’s (I am so glad he is almost thru his language requirement!!! 
). So, his GPA is less than the 3.75 needed for NHS. BUT - looking at his transcript, he has taken MUCH more challenging courses (especially in math and science). And he is on the advanced tract for math as well.</p>
<p>Now, I have no real resentments (this friend’s mother is one of my close friends). DS#1 got in this year as a junior (we have just moved to this school this school year) and I am pretty sure DS#2 will make it next year as a junior - but still it just “gnaws” at me a bit.</p>
<p>We are in Texas (so messed up!), so all of these weighted grades count toward class rank, final GPA, etc. In our school, to be in the top 10% of the current graduation class (about 640 kids), you have to have a 4.2 GPA! Geez…</p>
<p>Our sch.:
AP= +2 pts
Honors=+1 pt.
dual enrollment at local CC=+1 pt.</p>
<p>“Colleges are virtually evenly split on the practice of recalculating GPAs. Forty nine percent do and 51% do not. High yield institutions are more likely than low yield institutions to recalculate GPAs”
<a href=“http://www.nacacnet.org/PublicationsResources/Research/Documents/06StateofAdmission.pdf[/url]”>http://www.nacacnet.org/PublicationsResources/Research/Documents/06StateofAdmission.pdf</a></p>
<p>Our school: no weighting, no ranking, no valedictorian.
Extensive school profile indicates to colleges the strength of a particular student’s schedule in the context of what is offered at the school. Further clarification provided in the counselor’s report/recommendation.</p>
<p>MomPHD:</p>
<p>Thanks for the link - interesting…</p>
<p>You are welcome for the link. </p>
<p>Question to those whose high school does not rank–what happens when any given rank or percentile is required as a criteria for a college or other organization’s merit awards, placement in college honors programs, etc.? How does your high school handle this? Several colleges I asked said they could not waive the requirement for rank. Is your student excluded from consideration? I feel sick when I read on these boards that deserving students lose scholarships or other opportunities because their high schools don’t rank.</p>
<p>My school does:</p>
<p>(.17 x # of APs/DEs)/ # of years in high school = # that is added to your final GPA</p>
<p>I don’t know how Gov. School is weighted because it isn’t mentioned anywhere, though I would like to know, especially since the Gov School kids are the only people ahead of me in rank. I honestly don’t feel like it should be any different since they’re all pretty much the same level at my school.</p>
<p>Our public hs in MA follows the Mass state college/univ system: “standard” (ie remedial) classes A is 3.0, regular/college prep classes A is 4.0, honors classes A is 4.5, and AP A is 5.0. </p>
<p>How colleges handle GPA’s is all over the map. The most selective schools generally don’t weight - if you’re not taking all honors & AP they won’t admit you anyway. Some colleges weight with the Mass system, some (seems to be more common in the south) go with 5.0 for Honors and 6.0 for AP. </p>
<p>I got quite a surprise at the Clemson info session. They said they use whatever system your high school uses. They look at the transcript and the school profile that the guidance office sends, and judge based on each school’s system. Fine, but how do they translate that into their mid-50% range in their Admitted Student Profile?</p>
<p>I set up an Excel spreadsheet with D’s grades. I have one column for unweighted (4.0), one for the +0.5/+1.0 for honors/AP system, and one for the +1.0/+2.0 system that one of her desired colleges wants. That way I can see where she fits into each school’s stats, as long as I know what system each college uses. I’ve found that if you ask the college what system they use, they will usually tell you.</p>
<p>Our high school ranks, but they only send out the following: Val, Sal, top 5%, top 10%, and the rest are ranked by deciles. Because of the weighting system, we’ve never had a tie for Valedictorian.</p>
<p>At my school it’s
+0.0 for honors
+0.05 for AP
So you would have to take and pass two AP classes for an extra point to be added.</p>
<p>Nothing is weighted.
We don’t have Pre-AP classes, and we don’t have dual enrollment within the high school itself (you can take classes at local colleges).</p>
<p>We still rank, which is no longer the trend. When I look at the common data set for schools S3 is applying this year for the % of students in the top 10% I always look at the notation for the % of applicants that reported rank. It’s consistently been in the mid 40% range. This includes instate publics/privates, and OOS publics/privates. Schools are moving away from ranking. </p>
<p>Their hs does weight, 0 for pre-AP (for those that don’t have pre-AP these are much like honors in 9/10th grades that are prereqs to APs), 1pt for AP, 0 for DE, we have no honors levels (a big flaw I feel come Jr/Sr year your choice is college prep or AP). </p>
<p>Rank is on weighted gpa, only one val and sal, and kids do game this to some extent. However we have so many AP, top ranking kids that are in orchestra, band, drama, or robotics, ALL require a non-weighted course to participate. Most years our Val is involved in one of these activities. The year my S1 graduated the val and sal were split because of one B in one quarter in PE sophomore year. The sal personally thanked the PE coach since he got to give the funny speech. No one remembers who was val. The sal got a full ride to Duke, I don’t think they cared he was ‘second’. </p>
<p>My kids have applied to schools that use holistic admissions and those that are really numbers driven, those that recalculate grades, and the majority that don’t. There is no one system that is ‘most fair’ only those that favor your students profile.</p>
<p>Weighting? What weighting? My HS didn’t weight at all, which was frustrating for those who took IB classes and whose GPAs suffered because of it. Someone with a 3.9 GPA having taken full-IB was ranked the same as someone who had taken Physics B and cooking all through high school with the same GPA. My year, I was one of 3 students (out of ~300) with a 4.0, and the tie-breaker for a scholarship to the top-ranked student was settled with ACT score. (If there was an ACT tie, it would go down to number of credits taken. Nowhere did course rigor come into play.) We didn’t technically declare a valedictorian, but I had the highest GPA, ACT, and full-IB, plus I was graduation speaker. Everyone called me the valedictorian anyway…</p>
<p>But as for weighting, as much as I was annoyed by the lack of weighting at the time, I am glad in retrospect that there wasn’t weighting. Because weighting discourages becoming well-rounded and taking non-AP/IB/DE classes. I was in band for 4 years, plus choir, art, and debate to fill my elective slots. If there had been weighted grades, I probably wouldn’t have taken some of these because it would have lowered my GPA.
Is there a weighting system that rewards students for taking challenging courses, but doesn’t deter them from taking this type of electives?</p>
<p>Our school district weights GPA. Students get +1 for any “above-level” class, whether GT, AP or Honors. Some think that AP should get more points than Honors, but the problem is that many students can’t get the AP classes to fit in their schedule. For example, if you want to take a less popular class like Debate IV or Latin or Athletics (required for some sports) or orchestra, those classes will be offered only one period per semester and may conflict with the only time the AP class is offered. One of my kids had to take Honors Spanish 3 because AP Spanish 3 conflicted with another class. Another district in our area lets students take as many AP and Honors classes as they wish, but they only get the extra GPA points for 3 classes. The high schools in that district end up with over 30 seniors tied for Valedictorian!</p>
<p>Big public high school in Texas in big school district in which many kids are low SES. Grading scale is 1 to 100. Five extra points for honors, eight for AP. Dual credit is always also AP. There is ranking and it matters since top seven percent are auto admits to UT.</p>
<p>We are lucky enough to have a wide range of APs, including some tough science and math ones. We also have some easy ones that kids use just to boost their GPAs. </p>
<p>Each class has a different character. Some years the kids don’t take so many APs and the GPAs aren’t so high. Other years it is like an arms race to take every single AP and or extra points class. My kids have belonged to the arms race classes, for better or worse. Older son was number two by .005 points. Swimming and music, both regular classes, pulled him down. He wouldn’t have done it any other way, though. Younger son is top ten, pulled down by athletics. His class seems to have more gamesmanship, with kids taking classes just for the points, and doing a careful calculus of whether, say, physics C is worth the extra eight points, or too risky given its difficulty. That part does make me sad. I am idealistic enough to think a kid should take physics or math because he likes it or will need it later, and not avoid it because he fears for his GPA.</p>
<p>I hear the real scramble for points is at the bottom of the seven percent, and then again at the bottom of the twenty five percent as kids angle to get into UT and A and M.</p>
<p>Nano - One way to reward course rigor without deterring students from participating in non weighted electives such as music, drama, tech/IT, etc., would be to base GPA (and rank if reported) only on core academic subjects; English, math, science, history/social studies, and foreign language. Say in a seven block semester the student chooses their electives, be it AP Psych or orchestra, only five blocks figure into their academic gpa. Electives are P/F. </p>
<p>Now, you can’t determine if a school is going to find more corse rigor, or value, in AP Stats as an elective as opposed to band. In holistic admissions they would be looking for the ECs as well so band has it’s own value. Each school is going to ‘read’ this differently, but for the pure purpose of your question, this could be one suggestion. There are some colleges that recalculate using only core academics anyways, dropping all electives, stripping all weighting. Sometimes they add back their own weighting for APs, but it’s then universal to all applicants.</p>
<p>I was trying to come up with a much more complicated formula than that! That would get the job done, though, I suppose.</p>
<p>And yes, colleges strip out the weighting, but the problem can come in with rankings, especially when there was a scholarship available to the top 2 ranked students in the school, as determined by the school.</p>
<p>I suppose there’s no perfect solution, though; if there were, everyone would be using it!</p>