The after school music clubs are another option. Some are audition only but there’s some anyone can join like jazz club, percussion club. We’re very fortunate to have so many arts options in my district. It truly only affects the students who are chasing rank but our school started to no longer have a rank with this new entering class which really upset some people.
@citivas that sounds exactly like my D’s school’s policies. Are you in NJ? It’s unfortunate that some of the most academic students are also some of the most artistic and have to choose. Even my not super academic student wanted to take some more academic classes but is unwilling to drop either of the honors bands. If only PE/health wasn’t a 4 year requirement.
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My son’s weighted gpa has definitely left him at a lower class rank because he loves his band and JROTC unweighted classes and isn’t one of those kids just packing in all the random AP’s for the gpa. I hope his combo of essays, dedication to his interests and test scores will make up for what may not be the class rank he could have had if he gave up band and JROTC.
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Our high school only ranked deciles so that the (already) top students (and their parents) wouldn’t be tempted in strategizing/competing over percentage points.
Our high school had an option where students could take formal lessons outside of school (e.g, a private club/studio). She had to submit to the school’s athletic director the semester-long classes she took at the club/studio, and get the attendance sheet signed by the club’s manager.
Of course she still had to take regular health & drivers ed classes, but at least could opt out of school sports, which would have created additional schedule clashes.
Dito!
We encouraged our daughter to “choose”, but she insisted/persisted and I eventually realized that arts/music/theatre was the mental outlet she direly needed to keep up with crazy academics.
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Yes, Honors Band (and honors classes in general) are weighted. S25’s school has an odd grading system with regular courses on a 4.0 scale, honors courses on a 5.0 scale and AP courses on a 6.0 scale. His weighted GPA right now is a 4.8, but UW is a 3.83. I know colleges will recalculate to the lower GPA.
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Currently my son’s weighted is 4.19 (no AP’s yet),all honors when possible which have a little extra weight. AP’s and DE weights to a 5.0 scale, he will take 3 this year. His unweighted gpa is 3.9. 3.9 is the minimum to apply for NHS at our school.
Yes, we are in NJ too. School caps a max of 8 periods, one of which is a state mandated PE (and Health/Drivers Ed) course that cannot be waived or substituted for any reason. Add English, Math, Science, Social Science and Foreign Language and that leaves a max of two electives.
The band program is very competitive. Hundreds of kids audition each year for placement into 6 bands (each its own class), and no placement is guaranteed based on grade level or past placement (meaning kids can move down if others have better auditions). The top band does performances (up to a couple hours each) frequently and usually wins or places second in the state finals and in a national festival. It’s a major time commitment. There’s 3 levels of choir, a couple levels of orchestra and 4 plays a year including a musical (drama also competes in competitions and does very well).
The school doesn’t rank or have val/sal, so not as big a deal that these aren’t weighted. As you note, there’s a high overlap between top academic kids and those in these arts programs, particularly band and orchestra.
Interesting. I’ve always been curious how some students end up with weighted GPA’s close to 5.0 since that’s impossible at our school even for kids maxing APs and taking DEs at a top college nearby. Giving weighted credit to things like band helps, but it sounds like the 6.0 scale for some classes has an even bigger impact.
It’s all academic since the colleges have their own methodology that levels students weighted GPAs between schools (except for in-state vs OOS at the UCs, but that’s another story). But still fun to know…
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I’m glad NJ has high standards for education because we’re in a very poor district yet have all that except the hundreds of students auditioning, one winter play and a spring musical. Having so much during the actual school day allows more economic diversity in the students participating. It’s more like 10’s of students auditioning and most don’t get turned away. The strong musicians are very strong but it’s the same dozen or so around my D’s grade who aren’t really economically diverse that managed to do well but usually can’t compete with the north/central Jersey students.
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In addition to not weighting, our school doesn’t rank.
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Often, but definitely not always.
My C17 was offered the full-tuition scholarship at Alabama (the last cohort where that was still on offer). They made it clear in their instructions that they didn’t recalculate GPAs for that part of the (GPA and test score) thresholds, but that they simply looked at 9th–11th grade GPA from the high school transcript, and if there was more than one GPA listed (i.e., weighted and unweighted, and in a very few districts also “cure” GPA) they would take the highest of them. This put kids from districts with stingier weighting at a competitive disadvantage, but so it goes.
At many (probably most?) hyperselectives, and even at a number of other colleges, yeah, they recalculate GPAs, whether they say they do explicitly (e.g, Florida International, for a less-selective example) or not. But it’s also a resource allocation issue, and a lot of admissions departments don’t have the resources to spare for that sort of effort.
Agreed, the overall quality of the NJ schools is one of the reasons I turned down job offers to return to CA where my wife and I are from. While a public school, we definitely benefit from privilege. Most of the students in the top bands have private lessons on their instruments that their parents pay for. Some of the choir/musical singers have private vocal coaches. The top band, orchestra and choir take big trips every other year each to places like Europe that most parents pay for (though the parent booster associations supplements families who cannot).
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True, there are definite exceptions.
Though a school doesn’t need resources to recalculate if they make the students conform to a template. Our state school in NJ used SRAR and had its own rules for what counted as weighted. The burden was on the student to input and conform to those rules. Same with the UC App (which use a very different methodology than most and benefits in-state applicants though since the UCs have a quota for OOS, the two pools aren’t really in competition).
Also, most schools include the highest GPA achieved that year in the school profile. So AOs can see what was possible and recognize that a school that topped out at 4.3 is different than one that topped out at 4.9.
It definitely would be preferable if there was a consistent national standard but that ain’t happening…
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I think there are something like 25,000 high schools in the US, with probably 20,000 different grading systems.
For the more selective schools, they at least try to put your GPA in context, although that’s difficult to do. Our HS profile provides very little useful info at all, and none that is helpful in differentiating students in the top 1/2 of the class.
Once you get out of the top eschelon, I think the system @dfbdfb described is pretty common. My son got a scholarship at a directional U based on his weighted GPA. I am confident they had no solid basis to know what it meant, but there were 2 numbers on the transcript and they took the higher one.
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Wish we had that. Driver’s Ed here (MA) is $900 between the classroom classes ands the mandatory driving instruction.
The driver ed in NJ health class is the book part. Once the student passes at 16 they can do the driving class with a private driving course. It’s 6 hours at $350ish. She got her drivers permit at the end of the 6 hours and can practice with a parent until 17 when they take the real test. It’s so much more strict than when I grew up out west. You could just read the pamphlet and take a test for a permit at 15 then at 16 do the driving test for a license. I don’t remember any restrictions on it either like now. I did do drivers ed after school for pretty cheap like under $100 total and my parents got a slight discount on insurance.
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Sadly we still have to pay third parties to do the on road training and to use their cars for the driving test.
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Our school does not weight the art electives at all. It does drag down those kids GPA’s for sure. Our issue is my D25 can’t even fit in choir (or any other elective in that realm) so she has to do club choir before school. At least it doesn’t drag down her GPA but makes for an early day and she still does the concerts.
Our weighting scale is regular classes 4.0, honors 4.5, AP’s 5.0. Her current unweighted GPA is 3.99 (one A- freshmen year) and weighted is something like 4.46.
Out here in WA, you can either “wait until you’re 18 to get a license after passing the driving test” or you can pay for a private class (in the $600 range) that includes classroom, behind-the-wheel, 3 tries at the written test, and 1 try at the driving test – you can pay extra for more tries at the driving test… And the first 6 months, no driving anyone around, after that it loosens up a little, but you still can’t drive between 1am-5am or something like that.
I suspect it’s more “states adding more rules in the last 15 years” than it is “NJ vs out west vs middle of the country”.
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And not even the last 15 years—more like the last three or four decades. (When I got my license at 16 in Maryland it was a full license, but my sister got hers four years later and there was a probationary period, and more limits have been added since.) Graduated licensing systems have been urged by safety advocates for a long time, and in the US there’s even federal funding for available for implementing them.
We visited and toured University of Rochester on our way to take D23 to college. We all really liked it and it will definitely stay on n the list. Pretty campus, lots to do, curriculum sounds interesting. S25 has no strong opinions about any but his top choice yet, and is the kind of kid who will probably be fine just about anywhere. Also the kind not to do much research into details of schools. His list will be only schools that offer NROTC, and we are starting with those on the list that offer scholarships above the NROTC amount.
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