<p>One college info session presenter, in discussing GPA, said that they treat the midyear senior grades as if they were full year grades in calculating overall GPA, to reward rising trends and give a little extra weight to the most recent work. I was curious to know if this is common practice or one college's quirk.</p>
<p>First I’ve heard. You mind telling us what college is this?</p>
<p>I’d rather not name the college, first of all because (to be quite honest) I’m not 100% sure I remember correctly which school’s info session I heard this at; I just remember hearing it. I think I remember which school it was, but I wouldn’t want anybody’s life to depend on it. (We’ve been to a dozen of these sessions in the past two months.) </p>
<p>Also, it’s possible I misunderstood what I was hearing, and I wouldn’t want to spread potentially false info about a particular college’s processes.</p>
<p>Giving the first semester of senior year the full weight of an entire year sounds extreme. However, giving some extra weight to that semester in order to emphasize any upward or downward trend would certainly make sense.</p>
<p>I wonder if perhaps they meant that, when thinking about the transcript (qualitatively, as opposed to a calculation), since they can’t see grades that haven’t be given yet, they assume that the student’s performance in the second semester will match that of the first.</p>
<p>nightchef: if that’s actually true, I’d be really curious to hear how this particular school looks at junior year v soph/fresh…if the logic follows, a great junior year could make a mediocre soph/fresh year less important?</p>
<p>^ It is a fact that many colleges give more weight to junior year grades than 9th & 10th year grades. That’s why they want to see an upward trend. How much more weight is the real question.</p>
<p>^^^yup…that’s why nightchef’s revelation sparked my curiousity…</p>
<p>For whatever my opinion is worth, I’m not sold on the value of an upward trend. I mean, if you go from D’s to A’s, that’s meaningful. But if you go from 3.3 to 4.0, that may mean nothing more than that the kid said, “Oh, crap, college applications are coming up! I’d better get serious for four months!” I would think a prolonged, consistently good effort would be more valuable than prolonged slacking followed by a short burst of perfection.</p>
<p>^ Maybe some colleges equate “short burst of perfection” in the last semester of high school as a proof of the student’s capability and discipline to hang with the big boys in competitive college class rooms. After all, that “burst” lasted a whole semester, as opposed to a 3 hr “blip” perfection on the SAT.</p>
<p>I understand, but why is one kid’s burst this year better than another kid’s burst last year or the year before?</p>
<p>I’m asking rhetorically. I’m not making any major point, except that I think upward trends may be overvalued. If a college considers it important, my opinion means naught.</p>
<p>mantori.suzuki, at first I thought it sounded extreme, too (though welcome, because our son’s GPA is likely to improve this year), but when I think about it, it actually makes sense; it’s a way of responding to the anomalous fact that the most relevant year of high school is the one the college gets the least information on. If they pro-rate strictly by the calendar, giving the senior midyear grades half as much weight as the first three years’ final grades, then the senior year perforce becomes <em>less</em> important to admission than the others when it should be, if anything, more important. </p>
<p>So what this school is doing, if I understood it correctly, amounts to a legal fiction–they’re assuming that the student’s second-half performance would match the first-half performance, and calculating the overall GPA as if they were looking at the final transcript. (Of course, the second half probably won’t match the first half in the majority of cases, but that’s kind of a red herring, since if seniors knew colleges would see their second-half grades before making a decision, they’d presumably work just as hard, on average, in the second half as the first.)</p>
<p>The more I thought about it, the more sense it made to me, and that’s why I was wondering if it’s commonly done.</p>
<p>About the value of rising trends, etc.: I assume that the reason why colleges pay more attention to junior and senior grades is that they recognize that teenagers are works in progress–and that not everybody progresses at the same rate. The fact that Student A had his act together by 9th grade while it took Student B another two or three years to get his act together doesn’t necessarily mean that Student A is more likely to have his act together in college–or at least, not as much so as the resulting discrepancy in overall GPA is likely to suggest.</p>
<p>Sometimes an upward trend signifies maturation and a willingness to keep trying even when you are not at the front of the pack. These kids are the types who probably will not sink into despair when they get their first B or C in college. They will simply get back to work and do better next semester.</p>