Congrats.
Since I am unfamiliar with a HS doing latin honors, I’m curious, how does it work where they can do it before graduation and final GPA? Usually at college it is directly tied to final GPA. Do they also offer magna and summa?
He goes to a private school. I looked it up — almost 400 (mostly/all? private) schools nationwide participate.
Ultimately, a max of 20% of the graduating class can get cum laude. At the end of junior year, these schools can give cum laude to up to 10% of the class. At the end of senior year, they can add up to 10% more. My son’s school granted a little less than 10% cum laude status at the end of junior year.
His school does not rank or provide a cumulative GPA, so this is a nice recognition that he’s one of the top students at a very competitive high school.
Only cum laude. No magna or summa.
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Mixed feelings for me too. I don’t want to wish away my last year with her but I am not too excited for next few months. School starts in a week but she is in full swing with her Fall sport- at a 3 hr practice as I write this. She’s finding it hard to get fully into it- it’s a huge time commitment and other ECs have become more important to her. I know she would have been sad to not participate her Senior year though and hope she’ll get more excited as the season goes along . I think she’s feeling the stress of knowing she has a bunch of applications due in just 2 months. She’s also busy wrapping up her summer internship so not having a relaxing last week of summer vacation.
Our school uses cum laude/magna cum laude/summa cum laude instead of doing honor roll or dean’s list. So summa cum laude is the highest honor, and they are based on GPA. Ours are announced twice per year, and recognized at our awards convocation in May.
Quite concerned. What do you do if, for political reasons beyond family control, and through no fault of your child, the structure of an extracurricular club changes after she has been the club president for a month, and she gets demoted? She’s already submitted 3 college apps saying she is club president and what her duties are. It seems like it would be worse to tell the schools than to just leave it, since they would assume she’s done something wrong.
Edit: This hasn’t happened yet, but it could happen today, and I want to be prepared if it does. Of course we will resist if the principal does this (he would be doing it because of the failures of last year’s editor), but I’m not sure we have any power here.
So I know that admissions offices don’t like getting a lot of updates, and I strongly suspect this is not the sort of thing they would view as requiring an update.
Edit: Actually, I agree you should not reach out yourself. So I withdrew a suggestion to that effect.
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I wouldn’t bother updating schools where she’s already applied. The statements were accurate at the time of application and she couldn’t have predicted things would change. Plus it’s not sufficiently material IMO to warrant informing the schools.
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She should talk to her school guidance counselor and ask. If she does decide to update the colleges to which she has already applied, the update should come from the student or the counselor - not the parent.
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Agree 100% that any updates or queries not related to finances, should not come from the parent.
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I agree with dadofjerseygirl…no need to update AOs. And no parental contact with the AOs, typically.
Separately, I’m sorry your D is experiencing this situation. Good luck.
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I’m sorry that she is dealing with this. It must be very frustrating and I hope things end up in a good place in the long run.
I agree that I don’t think it needs to be updated. It was accurate at the time. She wasn’t trying to hide something. Change it going forward and call it good.
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@RadM These are my exact thoughts. I am trying to live in the moment while also wanting to see how the story plays out. This has been the case her entire life where I have been chasing mile stones (crawling, first words, walking, starting school etc…). D24 is our only so one year from now will be an entirely new chapter in life.
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1st day of school (so late here).
D24 spoke to her GC. She moved up to #2 in her class.
One more college visit to Vanderbilt in October.
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Thanks to all who responded. I think I have prevented disaster. In order to do it, I had to use up ALL of my mom-credibility points that I’ve accumulated through hundreds of hours of volunteer work. My husband gets to deal with the admin from now on–but it was worth it!
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My DS doesn’t start until next week so he’s using this time to get drafts of supplementals. I think he should focus on his ED and all the colleges with EA, leaving RDs for later even if he’d rather go to those schools than the EAs. Does anyone see an issue with this strategy? I can’t stand that he won’t have responses from most of his EAs before RDs are due.
S24 also is our only one so we are in the same position and it will take some getting used to.
@HotSauceFan that was the logic i tried to impart on my daughter but she wanted to get everything done before the school year as she hates having anything hanging over her head. To her credit she has basically completed about 15 applications. Provide your opinion and back away unless he comes back frustrated but it sounds like he is on top of it and just needs to work in his own progression.
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Wow that great that she is done with 15 applications. She is in a great Space. We just have the college list now and and the details on what prompts for each of these colleges he needs to work on.
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Has anyone heard counselors talking on “core” gpa? With my first two, they did not apply to a school that listed this specifically. However, one of S24 says “core” gpa has to be with in a certain range for a scholarship. I get, they are taking the 4 main areas of study and the number of years required for the college. Ex 3 years of math. My question is does it start in 9th grade? The highest 3 grades? My son took three high school classes in 8th grade do those count? What happens if you take more than the 3 years? I am going to ask when we visit but that is like 7 weeks away. Lol This is NOT a California school. I know they have a whole bunch of rules regarding classes and gpa.
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Yes, there are schools that only look at grades in math, science, history, English, and foreign language.
In terms of how schools look at 8th grade HS classes, it varies, and also will depend on if they are on your HS’s official transcript.
Your student can also message admissions and ask them, although it sounds like the guidance counselor is on top of it and may also be able to answer the questions.
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