<p>Our district does not weight grades at all, yet they rank our students, which means that students with few or no AP/Honors classes often take up many of the spots in the top 10%. We are trying to convince our district to at least weight grades for the purpose of calculating class rank as we feel that this puts our students at a disadvantage. I know that admissions counselors are aware of the difference and try to take this into account. However unlike just recalculating an unweigted GPA (which is easy to do), it is impossible to determine the affect that not weighting grades has on class rank. Also, if kids fall outside the top 10%, it hurts school USNEWs rankings to acacept them as number of students in the top10% is a ranking criteria, but doesn't take this into account. We ahve also discovered that some scholarships do not distinguish. </p>
<p>The district has asked us is we have any direct knowledge of graduates whose admission to a college or university was denied because of a lower class rank due to receiving a lower grade in an AP class. Of course this is difficult to answer as it is hard to point to examples where one can definitively say they were denied admittance because of an unweighted class rank. However, I thought I'd throw this open to the forum here and see if anyone knows of any specific instances where an unweighted class rank has had a negative affect on admissions. Also, if anyone knows of examples where the kid did not qualify for a scholarship or honors program because of an unweighted class rank, that would be helpful to know as well</p>
<p>You’d be better off trying to get your district to eliminate class rank (which is the direction many, many top schools in the country are going to…)…</p>
<p>Find out if you have the individual option to leave your class rank off of your transcripts; yes, a college has the right to call for the exact rank, but if they really want a student, they will not do that and go by their UW GPA and rigor of curriculum…</p>
<p>It will be close to impossible for admissions officers to admit that they did not accept a student due to their class rank; it would actually be unethical (like saying they didn’t accept due to demographic reasons…)…</p>
<p>Our district reports both weighted and unweighted grade points and ranks. For the purpose of honors ceremonies, they use both. (Transcript shows both). So there is a thin layer of kids who make the A honor roll, for example, who would not make it if they only used only weighted or unweighted. What I’ve seen is that there isn’t a whole lot of difference in the rankings - this for my good but not great student. But no doubt it’s a hardship for the kid who challenges himself and gets a somewhat lower grade.</p>
<p>I’ve heard anecdotally of scholarships being affected, and I am told large schools often accept strictly by the numbers. The privates I know of (heard from 8 last night) say that they have regional reps on their admissions committees that know their areas very well and understand what the different schools offer and how they grade. They gave as an example a school in somewhere that has only graduated four 4.0s in the history of the school When a transcript from that school has a lot of B’s they know it’s not a big concern. </p>
<p>If your school wants to continue with the current system perhaps you can persuade your GC to include wording like this: “We don’t weight grades at ___ High School. However ____ Student’s grades are among the best/ in the top 5%/ top 10%/ top 25% of those with similarly demanding schedules”</p>
<p>Our school reports both weighted and unweighted but only uses weighted. Perhaps your school could calculate weighted and only use it for college admissions purposes? Politically it probably wouldn’t fly though.</p>
<p>I agree that it is a good idea to eliminate the class rank, however, even schools that don’t rank usually have to submit a school profile that states a GPA for each decile ("10% of our students have GPA above 3.7; 20% above 3.4;…etc.)</p>
<p>Weighing grades does not solve all the problems either - it usually “punishes” kids in band, orchestra, arts, etc; a student who takes an extra class that is not weighted will have lower GPA then his peers who took less classes, and so on…</p>
<p>Thanks for all the good info. Keep it coming. What we are actually proposing is that the school calculate both a weighted and unweighted class rank and let the student choose which to use. I’d be fine with not ranking at all, but the colleges do ask at least for deciles, and if it is based on unweighted GPA, you are back to square 1. Personally, I don’t like the ranking because it is so difficult to compare, but it seems you can’t really get around it. </p>
<p>I know it is hard to get an admissions counselor to admit that it was class rank, which is what makes the question they posed so difficult.</p>
<p>This was an issue at our HS. My approach had less to do with college acceptances (hard to quantify) but the choices that were incentivized by not weighting (why should I take an AP course when I can get an A in regular history?) That, combined with evidence that higher-achieving districts ranked, ended up working, though it was not instituted in time for our son’s class.</p>
<p>mafool, with the emphasis on outcome i.e. improving test scores, you would think that the schools would be doing whatever it takes to get kids to take harder classes (assuming harder classes correlate with improved test taking).</p>
<p>I’m really glad that our school ranks. How else can you interpret grades, if not by knowing where a gradepoint of x.y fits in rank-wise?</p>
<p>The district is encouraging students to take the easier courses and avoid the more difficult ones which makes no sense. It should be the opposite. It’s discouraging that the administrators are unable to see this without asking parents to collect miscellaneous anecdotal evidence for them. What’s their defense of their current method?</p>
<p>Our district ranks by decile. They used to rank each individual but switched to deciles because they felt that rankings increased the pressure and competition. This is a pretty Type A district, our high school especially, as the administrators well know. They use a weighted ranking, but when you get to the level of deciles the band/drama kids aren’t penalized as much. Also, they don’t publicize the kids’ rankings at all; it’s just between the school, the kid, and the colleges.</p>
<p>Of course it seems like every year there is a kid who is just determined to be valedictorian and does everything to increase her (and I use that pronoun advisedly) GPA. Funny how that kid never ends up being the val…</p>
<p>My school goes on and on with making a big deal about how it doesn’t rank…however, even though it doesn’t rank, it does, as nngmm said, provide GPA deciles. That doesn’t bother me all that much, but people don’t usually realize it until the end of their junior year/beginning of their senior year after having been told for 3 years that they don’t rank.</p>
<p>Our district does not weight GPAs but does weight class rank. You can get an Honors rank or regular rank, if you take enough honors/AP it does make a huge diffference. You choose what transcript to send to schools. There are strict guidelines to maintain honors ranking. If you want to know more pm me.</p>
<p>Their view is that colleges already take rigor of schedule into account and that it is not necessary. There is also concern that it will put too much pressure on kids to take lots of AP classes. Also, I have heard that they think it is elitist to count AP classes as more valuable that regular classes - that it devalues the efforts of kids who gets aids in regular classes. We are trying to show that a lowered class rank does hurt, even though they try to take the fact that it is unweighted into account.</p>
<p>Any specific evidence of how this has hurt students?</p>
<p>If the district means “due to a lack of weighting of the grade in the AP classes”, then the question is dishonest ---- phrased so as to make it impossible to provide an example, and thus provide grounds to not change the policy. To know that a denial was due to class rank alone, the other factors, including grades, would have to be high by the college’s admissions standards but the class rank low. That is almost impossible. If they mean a direct statement from the admissions office that’s even more absurd.</p>
<p>If the district is raising the question of students (in other districts that do weight the grades) being punished by the weighting if their AP grades are low, that’s a more reasonable question.</p>
<p>At our high school you would get a 4.0 for an A in regular physics, a 4.5 for an A in honors physics, and a 5.0 for an A in AP physics, so GPAs are weighted and kids try to get high GPAs. But the school does not rank. That is pretty common for rigorous public high schools in our area.</p>
<p>That’s what would normally be called “bonus points” rather than “weighting” (as in weighted average). But I guess high schools mean the first and say the second.</p>
<p>Siserune: What MidWestMom describes is what I am talking about and what I understand to be the most typical weighted GPA system (i.e. giving extra GPA points in AP and honors classes). And yes, it is pretty impossible to come up with explicit proof that someone didn’t get in because they did not get the benefit of weighted class rank. However, it is not impossible to have comparably good grades and a lower class rank if there are a bunch of 4.0s in front of you who never took an AP class and you got a handful of B+s in AP classes. For example, in many schools, a 3.8 GPA with a heavy AP load would clearly be top 10% and often top 5%. But in our school, it’s not even in the top 10%. If you compare two students with the same grades in the same classes at two different schools (assuming grade distribution in the schools are about equal) and one is in the top 5% and one is in the top 12%, the admissions officer might think it is because the second school is easier, when that is not the case. They may take into account that it is unweighted, but still not adjust enough. Not hitting that top 10% mark is a big thing for some top schools.</p>