<p>ASHINGTON ESTATES, Fla. -- For most high school students, the perfect grade point average is a 4.0. But that wasn't good enough for one Hillsborough County student who graduated with a mind-boggling 8.08 GPA.</p>
<p>Rumela Das did find time for cheerleading and the student newspaper at King's High School. She was enrolled in the school's International Baccalaureate program, where other students take online and summer courses in addition to Advanced Placement classes.</p>
<p>Rumela said she could have scored an even higher GPA if she had known about all the Advanced Placement and online course options available to her in ninth grade.</p>
<p>She plans to continue cheerleading at MIT next year. </p>
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Rumela said she could have scored an even higher GPA if she had known about all the Advanced Placement and online course options available to her in ninth grade.
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I'm assuming the GC dinged her for not taking the hardest courseload possible. LOL. </p>
<p>Other than that, I don't see anything that interesting or newsworthy . There are no weighting formulas given. It's obvious that there are some weightings that differ substantially from the way most districts do their weighting. (The theoretical max at my D's school was well under 5.00) The only way to judge is to know what the theoretical maximum was, and what percentage did the child receive of that number. If it was 9, then that's really not very impressive.</p>
<p>Clearly, her school accepted the credits from many courses taken outside the regular school day, whether at a community college or online. Our h.s. is very stingy about which outside courses can be taken for credit. And electives can hurt a student's GPA if they aren't weighted. This student probably didn't need the 8.0 GPA gimmick to get into MIT.</p>
<p>My school's GPA system has a 9.0 scale. We don't even pretend that it has anything to do with a 4.0 scale. An 8.08 for us means basically straight B's in AP and honors classes, or straight A's in mostly Curr. I (middle-level) classes and a few honors. The highest GPA's I've seen at school are around 8.7 or 8.8. </p>
<p>Seeing a GPA without the scale means absolutely nothing.</p>
<p>The below is pasted directly from the Hillsborough County Public Schools' student handbook. </p>
<p>"For honors courses taken during the year or semester being considered, the student shall receive .04 per each one-half credit honors course completed. A (.08) bonus shall be added to the student’s cumulative grade point average for each one half credit completed in an advanced placement course. A grade of C or higher must be earned in the honors or advanced placement course for the bonus points to be awarded."</p>
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But that wasn't good enough for one Hillsborough County student who graduated with a mind-boggling 8.08 GPA.
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<p>The highest GPA possible at our school seems to be about a 4.3 something, because that's what people with all As in the most IB classes possible have (not all IB classes are weighted, kind of stupid policy but whatever). Theoretically in the county you could get higher in an AP school I guess, but not much higher, because honors classes aren't weighted. But I guess if you took all AP classes, they would all be weighted, and if you took some in tenth grade, they would be weighted. That would probably bring you to a 4.4 something if you got all As (my 4.0 freshmen and sophomore year brings down my GPA ;) )</p>
<p>And it's precisely for that reason that admissions committees do not look just at the weighted average. They have your transcript with the classes and the letter grade printed next to it. To quote one person, "I never look at the averages. I look at the letter grades". </p>
<p>However this student's transcript was probably quite impressive even without taking the average into account. </p>
<p>IB classes are only weighted in the exam year in our county, and you can't take exams as a sophomore. They must weight in the first year (which I'm totally not opposed to, it's the same amount of work, but they must). Either way colleges consider it all in the context of the school.</p>
<p>This may sound picky, but if you are adding points after the averaging, rather than to grades which are then averaged in, it's not really an average, is it?</p>
<p>Someone should show the reporter a transcript with a GPA on a 100-point scale, she'd have a cow.</p>
<p>I agree, it's a ridiculous report. It's impossible to compare even two GPAs from different schools, let alone this girl's against to every student's in America. Even the "perfect unweighted 4.0" doesn't apply to all schools.</p>
<p>Nothing to do with the reporter. This district reports grades as unweighted and weighted. Students are ranked by their weighted GPA, with additional points given for AP, IB and college courses. The super competitive students take online and college courses in addition to the IB requirements, usually starting in middle school (see <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=105874%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=105874</a> ). The IB program itself would qualify as "most rigorous", so I'm not sure how colleges look at these extra classes. However, they are reflected in class ranking as described and the val/sal races are intense with theoretically no upper limit to GPA.</p>
<p>There are so many ways to "game" a GPA. For example (at my kids' school), a student who is in their 4th year of fine arts (band, choir, orchestra) will have a lower GPA than a student who has early release rather than fine arts (all other classes being equal) because fine arts is a level unweighted class. For that matter, being an office aid for one period could result in a higher GPA because it has no credit attached.</p>
<p>I have a better one. Kid takes the first two years at IB magnet, then transfers to neighborhood school. Two of my daughter's friends did this and were vals of their respective schools, although transfer reason was to have more time to play varsity sports.</p>