@homerdog yes, it just started this term, so a whole year course condensed to one semester. I hope so too, it will really help him close out 11th grade with a bang.
@Momof3B thatās great! My S21 is math phobic as well. So glad your S21 has a teacher he likes for pre calc.
S just got his rank for the first semester and he is on the top 1%!!!
@Aguadecoco Thatās great - are you in TX where rank REALLY matters? Regardless, how fantastic!
I was driving S and his teammate to a game last night and they were talking a bit about colleges. This was shocking since he NEVER talks about colleges and really doesnāt have much interest in the whole college process just yet - preferring instead to doing the bare minimum that we make him do.
Anyway, teammate asked what schools S liked, and S responded that he really liked a school that would be a big time safety (i.e .80%+ acceptance). At first I was like hmmmm, but now Iām actually excited that he likes something. Maybe weāre starting to turn the page and heāll become a little more engaged in the process. Either way, if this turns out to be THE school, so be it. I just want him to be happy.
@mamaedefamilia Yes we are in TX and DS wants to attend UT.
@Aguadecoco thatās awesome! I feel like all TX students I see on CC want to stay in TX and the holy grail is UT!
Yay!! Congratulations!
@Aguadecoco wow, thatās impressive! Congrats to your son.
Do most schools start ranking during junior year? I think ours doesnāt until senior year, but I donāt know for sureā¦
@inthegarden our school district starts releasing class rank after the first grading period of 10th grade. They suppress it during 9th grade in an attempt to not stress out freshman right off the bat. Itās then updated with each grading period/report card after that. Again, Iām in Texas, where top 10% is crucial (top 6% for UT), so yea, unfortunately you have to know how to play the GPA game from the get go.
@inthegarden I believe TX uses rank from end of junior yr to determine auto admit. I am not really knowledgeable since S is my oldest so someone else can correct me if I am wrong.
Yes, your cumulative numeric grade point average at the end of junior year is what is used for class rank and is what is reported to collegesā¦thatās how itās done in our school district.
TX here tooā¦ congrats @Aguadecoco! Ours does not release until JUNE after junior year. Aka too late to do anything about (or stress over I suppose). That being said D is in a very competitive small magnet school so we are hoping to be pleasantly surprised, but are planning to be holistic review at UT.
My S21 is homeschooled so no rankā¦but my D23s just got their ranks already after the first semester of 9th grade! I presume itās going to move a fair amount the next few semestersā¦especially since there are no weighted courses in 9th grade but those will start affecting things in 10th.
@nichols51 my son moved from 25.9% at the start of sophomore year to 15% right now. As they start taking more AP/DC classes that are weighted more they Start moving up fast.
All this talk about class rank gives me anxiety. Our HS stopped ranking in 2014, well before I had a high schooler. I remember thinking it was crazy to stop ranking kids, but as it turns out, Iām not that upset anymore. It may just be a generation gap, but I feel that her friends/class is much more collaborative and supportive than my HS class ever was.
I think, if our HS ranked kids, they would have so many fewer top kids in band/chorus/fine arts - and the district is really proud of their arts programs. By having that āregular classā every single semester of every year, their GPAās go down, even with Aās.
@3kids2dogs
All the kids have to take a PE/sports/Music/band/chorus/fine art/Robotics/Yearbook etc., class every semester at our school also. S runs XC and T&F so that is his class.
In our district, class rank is based on weighted GPA and the only classes included towards that are core classes (Eng/Sci/Math/History), foreign language and if a student is in Academic Decathlon. They stopped including band/orchestra/athletics/electives in class rank because they didnāt want top students to drop out of taking those programs.
Itās a race here to get to the top even though we donāt rank. All honors and AP with all As is the goal for maybe the top 5% but only about ten-twelve kids make that happen each year out of 700 kids. We have honors versions of everything including classes like band, art, etc., but they are more work and usually require proof that you take lessons outside of school and one has to also enter competitions each semester in order to be in the honors class. The one and only class that isnāt honors is Health. Gym grades donāt get included in GPA.
Itās a race because many of these kids apply to the same colleges and they also have similar ECs. A higher GPA can make the difference for the colleges that only take a small number of kids from our school. I always hear kids say things like āthose three or four kids are applying to Duke ED so I shouldnāt botherā because those kids have higher GPAs. Yeah, yeah, I knowā¦holistic admissions and all of that but GPA is still pretty telling when I look at Naviance and from the info I know from last yearās graduating class. Being number seven instead of number three wouldnāt matter but being number 24 instead of 11 might. So, itās not spelled out like that since we donāt rank but kids still push themselves to take as many honors classes as they can manage and tutor themselves up like crazy to try to get As. Neither of our kids have used tutors and S19 even thought about writing one of his essays about how he was the only kid in BC Calc without one.
So, no, kids donāt know if they are number one or number ten and colleges are supposedly only told the studentās decile in the class at the end of junior year. They tell the colleges the studentās decile for weighted and unweighted. I believe D will be in top decile for unweighted but not weighted since she has a handful of non-honors classes including her art classes.
Many colleges take out all but the academic classes and rework the GPAs without them. Iāve heard that a lot of schools do that and use UW GPA. And then they assign a rigor to that GPA. Schools canāt compare weighted GPAs because high schools all weight differently so colleges have to have their own system to compare.