@2muchquan Colleges can generally figure out where a student ranks if any numerical information about the class is provided in the school’s profile. But for schools that don’t rank, its generally better for the student for admissions and scholarships.
our school stopped ranking since it’s highly competitive school and two Bs push you out of top 10%. I guess colleges can figure out based on the current and past applications.
@2muchquan I couldn’t help but post the link b/c the entire time I was reading it, all I could think about was http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1888375-a-nursing-degree-from-an-ivy-is-a-waste-p1.html (Ivy for nursing degree and not understanding why someone wouldn’t pay the extra $160,000 for MIT.)
That is when I read this forum and realize that I live in a very different world.
@itsgettingreal17 Trying to figure out ranking based on GPA and our HS profile is like trying to figure NMSF state cutoffs. 
It would be a crap shoot…just not enough detail in it.
Our HS is large and pretty well-known, so colleges probably have enough information (past and present) to make a pretty good guess.
I think that if I had homeschooled, either me or one of my kids would no longer be with us. I do not have the temperament or patience. But we have been extremely lucky in the public school lottery and both kids have had an excellent education and experience.
@carachel2 I loved wood shop class (the daughter and granddaughter of a carpenter, what a surprise). A lot of my sculpture pieces end up having wood in them because it’s a material that speaks to me.
I’ve encouraged the girls to take non-academic classes-D1 has Sculpture 1 next year, D2 has technical theater. I am deeply glad we don’t live in Texas because of their academic atmosphere right now. Did you give that guy the same sympathetic look back for NOT letting his kid take wood class? 
We recently realized that a 9th-grade course was missing from our oldest’s transcript, so we put in the paperwork to have the mistake corrected and get it added in. When we handed the form in, we were asked if we really wanted to do that, because the guidance counselor ran the numbers, and adding an A to her 9th-grade year would have two effects: (1) raise her 9th-grade GPA from a 3.87 to a 3.89, which would ruin her “upward trajectory” of 3.87→3.88→somewhere higher; and (2) drop her overall weighted GPA from slightly higher than a 4.0 to just a little less slightly higher than a 4.0.
Really? I mean, really really? And this is at a school that by design doesn’t do things like mention GPAs at graduation, or publish class ranks, or award honors like valedictorian and salutatorian to top-achieving students, or whatever else. (No sports or fine arts honors, either—it’s all very mellow across the board.) I mean, if you get questions from the guidance counselor at a school like that, how insane must the pressures be at schools that aren’t quite so hippie-granola about such things?
Sometimes I’m incredibly happy that my current 9th-grader has much more “normal” grades, and questions like this are unlikely to come up for her.
@greeny8 I absolutely agree. Rooting for everyone and their children!
@carachel2 I laughed out loud imagining the super parent. Wood workshop rocks!
@MotherOfDragons I loved wood shop, metal shop, and technical drawing in high school. All were required courses. My hs didn’t rank except #1 and #2. I think the fact that we didn’t rank was the reason that a very large number of kids got accepted to and attended elite schools. And the creative kids got to take lots of very interesting and fun courses without worrying about getting into college.
@dfbdfb That’s really silly! Such craziness going on at schools these days regarding grades and rank.
Our school just recently sent out a note to both parents and students to ask if they should re-consider their ranking policy. I filled out the response with a resounding yes, change it to non-ranking. I also wrote a note explaining that it would be helpful if the 8th grade parents receive some guidance on how the whole process works BEFORE their kids get to the high school.
I guess it must be really competitive at the top of our school. I hadn’t really paid attention to it until this year. Like I’ve said before, my 11th grade son who has no B’s on his final year end grades ( mostly A-, so a 3.7 UW), is not even ranked in the top 35-40% of his grade of 385 kids. I was actually very surprised. In the big picture, it doesn’t really matter as he doesn’t claim to be a top student, nor does he put in the time or effort to be in the top. It shouldn’t affect him at most of the schools he would like to get into anyways, but he was a little surprised too. He should move up this year in rank a bit, and maybe next year as he will take a few AP classes and increase weighted gpa.
@dfbdfb I hope your daughter is prepared to explain why her GPA plummeted from a 3.89 to a 3.88 in 10th grade, perhaps in a supplemental essay? ~X(
When I first learned about Texas 10% rule (down to 7% this year) on CC, I thought it sounded great, especially when compared to holistic admissions which can seem random (to me) at times.
But the more I learned about it, the more I learned about the unintended consequences linked to this system.
There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch - TANSTAAFL
Sometimes the easy answer (Common Core? Ranked based admissions?) isn’t the best or right answer.
Okay…probably a stupid question however I will ask. What do you mean weighted and unweighted GPA? I just goggled this and am now even more confused than before. Ugh
@Tgirlfriend Unweighted GPA treats all classes the same. So an A in a regular (or on-level) class is worth the same number of GPA points as an A in an honors or AP class. Weighted GPA treats classes differently depending on level of rigor. So an A in a regular class is not worth as many GPA points as an A in an AP class. At D’s hs there are no unweighted GPA’s. The college will need to use its own system to recalculate the GPA. Her hs has regular classes as 4.0, honors and dual credit classes as 4.5, and AP and IB classes as 5.0. So as you can tell, to have a high GPA and therefore high rank, at D’s hs, a student needs to take as few regular classes as possible.
The Texas 10% rule (for TAMU and others) and 7% for UT is the worst for those that attend competitive high schools. A very good student at a competitive high school could be denied admission at UT, while if the student had attended a less competitive school (thanks mom and dad!), they would have been auto-admit to UT. That’s why so many see it as unfair. And as a result, a lot of really strong students in Texas end up going out-of-state. I definitely prefer holistic admissions to the current system.
Btw, the only stupid question is the question left unasked.
@itsgettingreal17 …okay. Thank you for the explanation. Our school does the weighted GPA then. Things have changed so much since my daughter graduated in 2008. Back then I knew nothing about regular classes verses PreAP and AP classes. I don’t think our school doesn’t have any IB classes. They have regular classes on a 5.0 GPA and then we have PreAP, AP and Dual Credit on a 6.0 GPA. They break the grades down farther than I personally think they should. In a regular class a 94 would be 4.4 and a 98 would be a 4.8. That can make a huge difference when you are trying to get rankings. These kids can’t catch a break.
One more thing about weighted GPAs: The biggest problem with them, in my opinion, is that there’s no standard. My high school back in the day weighted honors classes by adding .25 and AP classes by adding .5. Schools in the district we used to live in in Florida didn’t weight honors classes, but added 2 points (so an A is a 6!) to AP classes. (You still get a zero if you flunk.) Some districts here in Alaska add 1 point to all honors and AP classes, others add .5 point for honors classes and 1 point for AP classes, others don’t weight honors classes and add 1 point for AP classes.
Basically it’s a mess, and it makes weighted GPAs pretty much meaningless—and yet they still get used. For example, the University of Alabama (among others, but that one’s a financial safety for my oldest) uses the highest GPA listed on the high school transcript to determine eligibility for their automatic merit scholarships, making things relatively harder for students from schools that don’t weight, and quite a bit easier for those from schools that weight maximally.
Wow, this is a busy thread! Just trying to catch up on everything. Happy to see some new parents, and I know I am still somewhat new, but it’s really fabulous how supportive everyone is. Love it. Hope all the kids taking AP tests can see the light at the end of the tunnel! I don’t have much to add really, but our large public California HS reports decile rankings only. My DD has been in top 10%, but I have no idea where the line is for 20%. I thought about trying to find out, but then thought maybe this is a sign of caring too much and possible mental instability?! I’m still curious but have no idea. One thing I did learn recently, the denominator matters, as mentioned above. My D is taking 3 AP/Honors classes out of 6, but in the Fall she was in the school play which gets added to the transcript as a separate non-weighted class (and basically an A grade). The teacher even said if your GPA is above 4 it will go down and if below 4 will go up. I was like, Whaaat? Anyway, my daughter could have asked to not have that on her transcript, but she decided to leave it be. As a plus, for UCs one needs a year of visual and performing arts, so she will actually have 1.5 years. Anyway in CA I feel there are too many ways to calculate one’s GPA (weighted, unweighted, capped at 8 semesters of AP/honors, uncapped, 9-11 grades, 10-11 grades…).
Well, sign me up for the group that sometimes feels overwhelmed by all the superstar kids and parents on CC! Our S is doing well at a smallish school in Iowa (one of the top 10 in the state, but nothing like the systems in Texas or the private schools I read about on here). He’s not in the top 10% of his 125-student class, isn’t “hooked” and only a couple of consistent but everyday ECs, but he has good test scores, has a good UW GPA and is a happy kid. I am still amazed by all the AP talk – our S will be taking his first AP classes as a senior, and while he took an honors class last year, he really hasn’t had a lot of other choices for advanced classes. He also has one dual enrollment (ours are online classes from the local CC) class under his belt, but I sometimes worry that he’s going to feel completely overwhelmed by others’ HS achievements when he goes off to college, much like I was back in the day when I discovered that some students already had college credits when they came to my directional university. I had no idea that could even be done! Now I know, of course, but my S will graduate with a “regular” HS career with a 3.9 GPA, a few AP and DE credits and that’s it.
My D just learned the Val this year will graduate with credit for 30 college classes earned through AP and DE. Not 30 credit hours, 30 classes! In our state university system some AP exams, like Bio and APUSH, can be worth two classes for the score of 4 or 5, so he likely has around 16 AP classes and a handful of DE. He was very active in EC also.
I thought I was helping my D game the system by shooting for AP credit for 15 classes!
And class ranking is based on weighed GPA so the 4.0 UW kids have to pile on the APs if they want to shoot for Val, there are 2 or 3 in my D class going that route. Val last year had 17 APs.
All this discussion shows why colleges “unweight” the classes. Some schools weight on a 6.0 GPA, some 5.0. Out school weights “advanced” classes and 200 level or higher DE (university) classes on a 4.25 scale. And I do not think anyone at out HS gets through the HS years with a 4.25 GPA. That is probably why the colleges also want the rank of a student for those schools that rank. Also why the school profile and LORs are important, especially for the more selective schools.
Welcome @IABooks happy to have you join this awesome group! a regular high school career sounds great…he’s normal!