<p>Question: Should my daughter stick with marching band even if it means her class rank will drop?</p>
<p>WHAT DID "THE DEAN" SAY?</p>
<p>As a mom of a valedictorian kid who faced a similar issue, I want to weigh in. 9th grade is really young to already eliminate every class and every activty that is not weighted. You have no idea how her grades will be, how her classmates will fare, what electives she may want, etc. Do you really want to give up on something that is an EC as well as a class just because it is not a weighted course?</p>
<p>My oldest is a varsity athlete. At his school, the sport also doubles as a class. So, once the PE requirement was exhausted, he was taking his sport as an unweighted elective. He was very concerned that this would hurt his class rank, because most of his class rank competitors were not athletes. But, here’s the thing. Everyone at school does something. At number 1, ods has four years of unweighted varsity sport. At number 2, the next kid has four years of unweighted band. At number 3, the next kids has a different varsity sport. And so it goes. There are very few schools that actually have enough AP classes that each student can take six AP classes every year. And even among the smartest kids, who wants nothing but solid APs every class all day from grade 9 or 10 on up?</p>
<p>Can your kid maintain straight As with the added time commitment of band or sport? Can your kid still take some APs with the added time commitment of band/sports/etc.? If so, and if the kid wants to do band, let them do band. If taking only AP classes means no electives of interest, no EC activities, etc., that sounds like a pretty miserable high school experience.</p>
<p>Remember, the GPA rules apply to all kids at your school. What a dull school if no one played sports, played in the band, etc. because they only wanted weighted classes.</p>
<p>Personally, band might have kept me from moving higher than 6th out of 333, but the friendships I made, lessons I learned, and leadership I gained MORE THAN makes up for that fact. Wouldn’t trade that for valedictorian. </p>
<p>It concerns me that a college would value the idea of giving up band/orchestra for a higher class rank and select students who choose to give up a genuine interest for the sake of admission. </p>
<p>Pursuing an art requires practice, discipline and teamwork, qualities that also make good students. In addition, a student who chooses to continue in orchestra/band is doing so for the intrinsic value of it, not the GPA, and this is not a quality one would wish to weed out of a college student body by selecting against such students. </p>
<p>I don’t think that changing the high school grading system is the way to reward students like this, but the colleges can by not selecting against music students if they have also taken rigorous classes and maintained high GPA’s. </p>
<p><a href=“Why taking choir kept me from being a Valedictorian: Austin Channell at TEDxColumbus - YouTube”>Why taking choir kept me from being a Valedictorian: Austin Channell at TEDxColumbus - YouTube; this is a good video that puts this in perspective. Music is well worth it.</p>
<p>Great Video, guineagirl. Another mom of a music student who has already dropped a few places and will more before she is done. Don’t care. They can have it</p>
<p>Don’t the admission department only accept the unweighted gpa in their calculation?</p>
<p>Class rank in any given school is usually based on your weighted GPA. Weighted courses will boost your weighted GPA therefore class rank, but yes, the admissions only really look at UW.</p>
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<p>If she is truly a strong candidate for Val, and it is an important goal for her then it is a choice worth serious consideration. S had to make the choice and choose Val. He is a talented musician and still found many ways to be involved in music which are far more impressive than school band. If she loves band and it is an important social activity then those are good reasons to stick with it, but if you are worrying about what colleges will think, band members are a dime a dozen.</p>
<p>Absolutely not.</p>
<p>Grades first and band will come later. Except he/she expects to make a living from what ever position he holds with the band.</p>
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<p>Schools are looking for kids with a particular passion. If your child can express her passion for music without band (or jazz band, orchestra, etc) then she has no real reason to stay in band unless she simply wants to. For my son, he has friends in marching and symphonic band, his musical passion is tied to one of the smaller adjunct bands. The band kids are a good bunch and closely supervised by a lot of actively involved parents and mentors, so I don’t worry about how and where he spends his time. So it made sense to be there, even though he doesn’t intend to be a music major…</p>
<p>One thing that helps my son is that upper level arts classes get honors points at his school. So Band 4 and 5 weighted with honors classes, as are Drama 4/5, Technical Theatre 4/5, etc. . </p>
<p>Reading the original question puts things in perspective. Out of a class of approximately 550, the decision to stay in band might drop the student from #1 to #10 or even #20. That is still in the top 2%-5% of the graduating class. And that drop would be the result of the weighting scheme rather than because of conflict or lowered grades in academic classes. </p>
<p>I guess this is one of the reasons why our school decided to do away with class ranking. </p>
<p>Still, don’t most colleges with selective admissions focus on GPA in academic areas rather than overall GPA and apply their own weighting schemes (or simply look at the “context”) rather than going with whatever the high school decides to put on the transcript?</p>
<p>Band has been a source of joy, friendship, and growth for D during her high school years. I would have hated to see her forego that in order to leap-frog a couple of classmates in terms of class rank or eke out an additional .05 points on a cumulative weighted GPA. </p>
<p>Hahahah this is honestly SO scary… It concerns me that colleges would rather have students who “strategize” to keep a high class rank than to do what THEY want to do and what THEY love. Absolutely ridiculous. Makes me soooo mad.</p>
<p>Not only does it make me mad like you Sally, it makes me sad. We are not teaching our teens to live a life with balance when we are constantly trying to make them stack up in a certain order to look a certain way to certain institutions. No wonder rates of teen depression are increasing all the time. </p>
<p>Frankly, all colleges care about is whether you’re in the top10%. Valedictorian rank may be useful if the student is aiming for a specific school that offers full tuition to valedictorians or if the school is so low-performing that the top10% wouldn’t be competitive for 4-year college entrance, but otherwise, it doesn’t offer a specific boost in itself. In addition, the really selective institutions look at unweighted GPA and want students who do more than “study” - taking more than 8 APs offers diminishing returns, for example, while the ability to take one “fun” class, revealing that the student does for fun, can help.</p>
<p>I am ranked 6th in my class of 1000, and I took band all 4 years. In fact, I value the leadership positions I held and the friendships I made higher than what could have been another AP class (and I will graduate with 13 AP exams taken).</p>
<p>The biggest difference I think band makes to a GPA is not the unweighted grade, but the fact that some bands require an insane amount of commitment in the form of performances and practice time. My son’s school has band practices most week nights, with football games on Fridays and “mini-thons” several Saturdays… That’s in addition to marching assessments, fundraising, and performances. It’s possible to maintain high grades and have a rudimentary social life (as long as he dates someone in the band, anyway), but it’s difficult. There are only three band kids in the top 10% of his class, and purely based on demographic percentages there should be three times that.</p>
<p>NorthernMom is correct! If your kid likes to play music, let her play; but she has to get away from the texting, sleepovers and other stuff in order to focus on the academics. Grades are important. </p>