<p>Snowdog–are your classes LISTED as honors on the transcript?
In our situation the classes were not listed as honors–they were all considered honors by the school (as such some subjects were either regular or AP-nobody had honors listed). Most colleges recalculate grades but only add weight if the course is actually LISTED as honors. Our school started listing the classes as honors (which they were) so that the colleges would pick that up and take it into consideration.
The total GPA will be recalculated by the college as long as your courses are listed as honors so in that respect you’re probably not hurt by it (hopefullly). The best thing to do is find out from admissions at schools you are interested in as to how they actually calculate (re-calculate) GPAs.</p>
<p>gouf: yes the classes are listed as honors. BUT it is meaningless because all the college apps my child has completed so far state explicity that unless the school adds weight to grades BY COURSE (sorry for the caps, I don’t know how to make bold), which our school does not, a 92 in honors is a B worth 3.0 points just the same as is a 92 in CP. Several of the apps have asked for self-reported GPA calculation (which will be checked by the college), so I am pretty familiar with this process now.</p>
<p>Although our grades appear on the report card only as numbers, in the fine print of the transcript, the school notes that 93-100 = A, 85-92 = B, 77-84 = C, etc. </p>
<p>It is much, much harder to get a 95+ in honors than it is in CP. I would argue with more than one in HS currently that it is harder to get an a C in honors (at our school) than it is to get an A in CP. </p>
<p>I’ll just say that with my younger child, I’ve stopped pushing honors as the be-all and end-all.</p>
<p>Snowdog–you can double check but if the course is listed as honors to the colleges by your school the college should recalculate the GPA to include that information whether the HS does or not.
Honors courses usually add 0.5 to GPA and AP 1.0 to GPA.
School difficulty does have some weight (if many students are fed into a college). There is an X factor given to the difficulty of certain schools by colleges (unfortunately you can’t count on your particular college choice being on board.)
Time to make friends with the GC at your school. We had a great GC who realized the current system in place really was hurting our students in the numbers game. Not an easy thing to push but I had one particular student I needed to get through the system!</p>
<p>Gout: been there done that, I’m telling you I have corresponded directly with admissions staff at colleges in the past month. If the school does not add weight per course, the student cannot do so himself. I am already well known to my kid’s GC. The GC can attest to rigor but is not going to monkey with the transcript.</p>
<p>The GC can change the system. They can’t monkey with a current transcript (very true) but CAN help with the way things are handled in the future. GC can also talk with college admissions officers to alert them about students (about their school, how GPA done, whatever). It’s a proactive stance that GCs don’t want to take unless they really care where their students are heading. (I’m SO lucky that my son had such a fab GC who really cared. Worth her weight in gold in even today’s prices…)</p>
<p>Your school will send a school profile along with the gc rec which states things like GPA calculation process, credit and course requirements, course offerings, average SAT/ACT, average # of APs per student, average AP scores/# of natl. AP scholars/AP scholar with distinction, etc., the list of colleges students had been accepted to, etc., etc. This helps colleges put each high school in context. Again, colleges will recalculate GPAs of applicants based on their own scale; they must do this for comparison purposes – some high schools, after all, are significantly more rigorous and demanding than others…some schools may be in remote rural areas and simply not offer a ton of AP courses…you get the jist.</p>
<p>I honestly don’t think all schools recalculate GPAs, but it’s really not difficult to look at transcript and figure out an approximate GPA and then look at the list of classes. Then if they don’t “know” the high school there is enough data out there to determine where the school ranks in the state and a composite of the kids. The school profile also gives enough information for colleges to make value decisions without recalculating all applicants GPA.</p>
<p>You can be sure there’s hardly an admissions officer in the country who is ruining her eyes over this. If the application receives three minutes in the first reading at many schools, it’s a lot. They’ll see if you have mostly As and a couple of Bs, look for red flags, check the SAT/ACT scores to see if the candidate is in the mix, and move on.</p>
<p>Some schools will definitely want to know how the candidate ranks among applicants FROM THAT SCHOOL. That’s so if they get to accept only one or two, they know where the applicants stand (and of course, they may prefer to accept the tuba player with the lower GPA.)</p>
<p>Yes and many very good schools don’t run a ton of AP branded classes so often kids are evaluated first in the context of their particular school which parallels the assertion that the grading scale is relative to that particular school even more so than a another school. Also most kids aren’t going to have a huge discrepancy in their grades and their standardized test performance so if you have a B+ kid who scores in the 87th +/- percentile on standardized tests…well as an admissions officer you move on to the other aspects of the application.</p>
<p>Don’t discount those rural, remote schools either. We have a little high school in our state with very few amenities and not alot of money and those kids go to amazing colleges. We ran into one of the teachers when my oldest was younger and he told her he “wished” he could go to school there and she said “oh no you wouldn’t want to, you’d miss all the things you have at your school.” I guess if you don’t have alot of distractions and ECs you have more time for academics even if the school can’t afford to pay for AP curriculum. It’s really not all about GPA and whether 90 is an A or a B.</p>
<p>jc40, surely you jest. Schools are not recalculating every GPA. If they did, they wouldn’t put the methodology in the application and tell the student to do it himself. All they are doing is a quick look to see if that seems to match the transcripts.</p>
<p>momofthreeboys: that’s my point. I have a “B+ kid” (ie., 92) whose SAT is 95th percentile. One particular school (just applied to) wants all numeric grades converted to letters and then to 3.0, 4.0 etc. </p>
<p>I’ll stop complaining but it’s been an eye opener. As I said I’m not pushing my youngest to kill himself in honors for a 92/3.0. He’s a math guy and is in CP history getting a 94 rather than the 80 he would probably pull in honors…I’m not hassling him anymore.</p>
<p>I agree with Mini. There are so many aps and so little time, that I don’t think the gpa is being refigured as often as is commonly noted on cc. In past years there have been several threads which concluded that regardless of what they espouse at info sessions, a higher GPA with “lower” classes produces better admissions results. Whether the students are better prepared for college is another story.</p>
<p>School profile to explain it all? Don’t I wish…our school refuses to produce/include one. It’s not like we’re some well known, prized school either. Sigh.</p>
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<p>Recalculating GPAs is probably more common with state universities which get mostly in-state applicants and can presumably get in-state high schools to report grades in a way that can be used for their calculation (UC and CSU are well known examples).</p>
<p>It does not seem like a private school taking applications nationally would be able to do this.</p>
<p>I agree with Mini that apps get little more than a few minutes (if that) during the first round. Perhaps “recalculate” is the wrong term – to clarify, GPA calculation varies tremendously from hs to hs. College admission officers recognize this – they don’t simply look at a student from school “X” who has never made a B, taken 7 APs and trash his app in favor of a candidate from school “Y” who has also taken 7 APs and never made a B but whose GPA is higher simply because his school weights courses higher. The transcript with the actual grades/courses is significantly more valuable than the GPA. If the GPA as assigned by the high school was that important, then my kid’s school wouldn’t do that well in comparison with others in our area who weight APs at .5-1.5 higher. However, the students at their school apparently haven’t been hindered. Considering the size of the class and the list of college acceptances, I’d say it’s been a non-issue. I suppose, though, one could make the argument that that list might possibly be more impressive if the school weighted APs at 5 or 6 and honors classes were given some type of extra weight like most neighboring schools.</p>
<p>At a college info night we attended recently Harvard officer said they do not recalculate GPA, do not have time for this…</p>
<p>Before an application is read, it goes through a process, where the GPA is recalculated, the split between 10th and 11th grade is calculated, (how do you think USNWR numbers are calculated), ec’s are given a numerical status, rank is given a numerical status, scores are added in, etc. The three minutes per application is after all that has been sorted and applied.<br>
Some large state publics don’t do that. Although I heard the UVA Dean say they do this for the out of state students, and I heard the Duke Dean describe this process, just as two examples of info sessions. Most Ivys do this as well as the top LACs.</p>
<p>Interesting thread. It is frustrating when your kid is on that A/B line. </p>
<p>This is also why students from OOS have more trouble applying to UC’s since the UC system does not recognized any honor classes from other states but Calif. They only accept a limited number of AP classes as weighted as well when they calculated a UC gpa.</p>
<p>From everything I understood UVa does not recalculate grades. (I would be interested to hear Dean J weigh in on recalculating OOS as this goes against what I have heard.) They look at it in context of all the other information sent (rank, APs offered, rigor, etc). They also use a very holistic process, so this is one part of what they look at. Although a GPA is listed on the common data set they do not have a cut off in admissions and avoid putting a GPA out there as a target. A 3.89UW can mean something totally different at different schools. From every indication I have ever had, they get this.</p>
<p>edit: I did a search on Dean J’s blog and found the following from 1/2010 (the quote is from the Q&A if you follow the link below):
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<p><a href=“http://uvaapplication.blogspot.com/2010/01/lets-talk-about-gpas.html[/url]”>http://uvaapplication.blogspot.com/2010/01/lets-talk-about-gpas.html</a></p>
<p>“They only accept a limited number of AP classes as weighted as well when they calculated a UC gpa.”—>This is not just for OOS. It applies to CA students as well.</p>
<p>Yes, we moved to a 93-100=A state when D1 was a sophomore. I always thought it kind of sucked, and really felt it when D2 got 3 B’s in high school…all in the 90-92.4% range. In the grand scheme, it’s not that big of a deal, but both girls rejoiced to get grades in college and be relieved that a paltry 91% was still an A. </p>
<p>H is a teacher (now) and it still seems really harsh for some of these kids that a 70% is the lowest D…in this case, it’s not going to affect their GPA for college, but may be a difference on whether some of these kids graduate or not.</p>
<p>“we moved to a 93-100=A state”</p>
<p>It goes by state? Are you sure? That is news to me and I could not find that online to verify so I am curious.</p>
<p>My 12th grader has been complaining for weeks as to why we moved to this school district, for that very reason. (When your children are in K, at least in my case we did not give a thought to the high school grading scale.)</p>