I have a question regarding how colleges will evaluate transcripts from my daughter’s high school. Her school is on a 7-point scale, so 93-100 is an A, 85-92 is a B, etc. We realize most schools are on a 10 point scale. As her transcript only shows letter grades, how does a college compare Sally’s 92 that is an A with Bobby’s 92 that is recorded as a B? She has a couple of grades right on the cusp, and I’m wondering if this will hurt her more than it should.
Each college has its own way of converting an applicant’s grades to its own standardized scale.
Every HS sends a school profile along with each transcript. The profile will explain the grading system, describe the different levels of classes etc. This way each transcript is reviewed in the proper context.
In terms of having grades on the cusp, that happens to everyone regardless of the grading scale. Likely the same people also just made a higher grade or two as well. If it is a real issue you can talk to the guidance counselor and see if he/she can address the impact of the grading scale in his/her recommendation.
Your D will be compared with students at her school while Bobby will be compared with students at his school.
I’m aware that each school converts grades, I’m curious how the college knows that a student had a 92 B vs an 85 B, when the only thing appearing on the transcript is the letter grade.
They will only see the letter grades if that is all that is on the transcript. Studies have shown that schools which used 93-100 scales give out about the same number of A’s as ones that use a 90-100 scale. (They’ll make tests easier, or grade essays more generously, so that it all comes out about the same.)
They won’t know what sort of B your kid has if they don’t use + and - grades. This is where enthusiastic teacher recommendations can make a difference.
My younger son was the king of the 89. He got into some great colleges anyway.
Don’t forget that there may be some A- grades that look like A grades, so it tends to even out.
I had the king of 91 and 92s. Just drove me crazy through his high school years and moreso back when he was doing the college applications and I was reading all the posts here about 90s being As… but I don’t think it really mattered all that much. The high school is a tough one and the profile explains how they attribute As, Bs, and Cs.
Thanks for the responses!
“Your D will be compared with students at her school while Bobby will be compared with students at his school.”
Only relevant for a relative handful of high schools where multiple students are applying to a given school in any given year.
Several elite schools have explicitly and unequivocally stated that they do not compare within high school.
@Pizzagirl “Several elite schools have explicitly and unequivocally stated that they do not compare within high school.”
They do in the indirect sense. They want to know where a student falls within the distribution of their school. Even schools that do not have class rank may provide a mean, quartiles of the grade distribution and a standard deviation. That is more than enough for the school to understand where the student falls within the distribution.
^ This was what I meant. I didn’t mean to imply that only one student out of school Z will get into any specific college, but that schools do NOT compare a GPA averages from different schools directly. There is too much other info involved, one element of which is class rank.