My high school is going to start using weighted gpa for class rank (vent)

Pre-College Issues High School Life
1

So, I know there’s a lot of benifts to weighted GPA and it should determine class rank fairer and blah blah blah. But, I feel like if I try to play “the weighted GPA game”, it would ruin trying to presume my passions and take classes I’m genuenly interested in. Its so unfair, because I’m taking more classes than the average high-achiver in my class, so the same difficulty plus extra but its lowering my weighted GPA which is the opposite effect. To make that make sense, here’s my freshman year schedule vs. a typical freshman year schedule, with weighted GPA assuming all As and +.5 for a honors class, +1 for AP

Me:
Debate (zero hour)
Honors English
Physics (should be honors, but isn’t on my transcript for whatever reason)
AP Euro
Orchestra
Spanish 1 (no honors offered)
Pre-engineering
Pre-Calc (online-no honors offered online)

W GPA- 4.18

Typical high achiver:
Honors English
Chemistry or Physics (we had a choice)
AP Euro
Algebra 2 Honors or Geometry Honors
Spanish 2 (took Spanish 1 8th grade, I used my only elective spot for orchestra)
Elective
W GPA - 4.4

And its not fair, I obviously took a harder schedule with more classes , more demanding classes (even if they weren’t honors) and yeah. And don’t get me started on unweighted high school classes we took in middle school that we could choose to put on our transcript before we knew about this. That’s gonna help the lazy people who didn’t turn forms in or the people who got Bs and didn’t put it on because of that. Its just not fair and I feel sick and conflicted if I should change my Sophomore schedule from one that’s similar to mine now to one more with just the standard, weighted classes. And it was the last day of school today, this isn’t what I should be thinking about. I should be enjoying my self not sitting on the couch crying. But yeah, I just wanted to vent. If you have any advice about what I should do or just something to comfort me, please tell e. But yeah, I’m really upset.

2

TBH, your classmates who took a lot of weighted courses probably felt the same when they only considered UW courses. Put yourself in their shoes; how elated would you be if you decided to go your own way, knowing that you would likely have a low class rank b/c of it, but then they changed the ranking method in your favorite?

Point is, as long as you do your best and are in the top ~5%, it really just doesn’t matter beyond that. It would have 15 years ago, but today we’ve gone ‘holistic,’ so don’t lose any sleep over it. Sometimes life lets things break your way, and sometimes it doesn’t.

3

But the thing is, even if they’re taking the same number of weighted classes as me, they’re getting a higher GPA because they have FEWER classes.

A better example would be:

Honors English
Chemistry or Physics (we had a choice)
AP Euro
Algebra 2 or Geometry
Elective
Elective

Weighted GPA 4.25 compared to my GPA of 4.18, even though we’re taking the same number of weighted classes, I’m taking more classes and just by that measure, I have the harder schedule.

4

Ironically, we had the opposite conversation in my family last night. Our school is moving from weighted to unweighted, and my D and her high-achieving friends are up in arms because they’re going to suffer relative to those who take non-honors/AP classes. Every decision helps one and harms another. My advice to you (which I also gave my D) is to take what you want to take based on where your interests are and let the chips fall where they may. You’ll end up fine and happier.