<p>How much weight is rigor of curriculum given at UW? In the "predictions" chart on the UW website, unweighted GPA is used. I'm assuming that UW must consider weighted grades in some respect, since rigor of curriculum is listed as one of the important admissions factors, but I'm wondering how much. Is a student who can only get a B+ in an honors or AP course but an easy A in the equivalent college prep course better off taking the standard course for college admissions purposes? D's school only weights 0.5 for honors or AP, so even for weighted GPA purposes such a student would be better off with the standard course, but we've always encouraged D to take some advanced courses anyway because GPA isn't everything and there are good reasons to challenge oneself. D is only a sophomore now, and she's going to continue to make her course selections for her own reasons, and not based on college admissions practices, but I'm curious as to whether taking honors and AP classes can be a disadvantage.</p>
<p>This is a ? best posed to admissions people at Wisconsin…from what I have seen over the past couple of admissions cycles, they are NOT all about GPA but do consider rigor of curriculum…cannot say that for other large publics (even ones higher ranked than WIsconsin)…hope that helps…</p>
<p>Happy to hear you are going for her education and not the college admissions game. UW does use unweighted grades but also looks at rigor- meaning always avoiding the top courses a HS offers hurts, this does not mean a student has to take every top course. An advantage of taking an AP test and scoring 3, 4, or 5 on it is the college credits given by UW. Notice, it is the test score, not the grade received from the HS, that gives AP credit. Continue to value her HS education for its own sake and see what her gpa is by the end of junior year, then you will have an academic picture to help her decide where to aim for college. Taking any course where one is out of one’s depth seems to me to be disadvantageous- struggling too much and not learning when the lower level class would be at a pace that one can learn the material. Try not to obsess over college in the coming years.</p>
<p>It is very important. Looked at rather closely.</p>
<p>I noticed the Illinois location. Another source of information may be your HS guidance department as they probably have many students who apply to UW and would know the stats of those who do and don’t get admitted from your HS.</p>