<p>I learned, too late, that one of the other high schools in the district allowed students in AP classes to have their grade changed to an A automatically if they get a 5 on the AP test. That would have made a huge difference in my son’s transcript. I didn’t pursue it (next step would have been confirming the inequity at the district level instead of word of mouth) because the admission season was over and it was too late. But I completely understand the OP’s concern and upset.</p>
<p>I didn’t read all these posts, but whether or not he transfers now or something happens that he drops out of this particular college etc… have them send you a corrected transcript as soon as they are able.</p>
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<p>I don’t think this is right.</p>
<p>In general terms, we are well past the time for a national system that would force ALL high schools in the country that receive federal funds to have a completely uniform system. Without a national requirement, schools systems will continue to outdo themselves to uncover ways to make their system an object of both gamesmanship and ridicule, from finding ways to have a 7.0 GPA to all kind of other ridiculous twists. </p>
<p>In the meantime, schools and school system that do not believe in the games brought by the AP/IB plague will continue to undermine the chances of their own students. Until changes are implemented, we will continue to have classes such as Honor Baton Twirling or Honor Basketweaving where showing up accounts for a better GPA boost than a B+ in Calculus. </p>
<p>As far as the lesson to be learned for CC parents, it remains the same that I have been preaching for years. It is every parent duty and obligation to figure out how the system work in YOUR high school well before the start of 9th grade. It is your obligation to scrutinize the school profile AND, most importantly, check with the graduating class how much BS your school officials are prepared to sell you. </p>
<p>Simply stated you CANNOT trust your school official, and especially not your guidance counselor(s.) They’ll tell parents of freshmen and sophomores all kind of stories. It is up to you to seek the TRUER accounts of parents of seniors. </p>
<p>Cynical as it might sound, the quicker you learn to NOT trust your school officials, the better off you will fare in the 3-4 years process of applying to college.</p>
<p>xiggi–I find it hard to believe that courses in “Honors Baton Twirling” or “Honors Basket Weaving” exist.</p>
<p>Colleges know to examine both GPA as well as rigor of courses.</p>
<p>xiggi-- We had specifically asked the school. There was even a lengthy discussion regarding online AP classes (as the online ky system grade scale was different from the school’s). It frankly never occurred to us that the school would so completely misunderstand district policy and it never occurred to me to double check everything the school said at the district level.</p>
<p>After 12 hours or so, I am feeling much better about it. Mentioned it to son when he called this afternoon and he was not surprised (was used to chronic competency issues at the hs), but also not bothered. He is happy where he is.</p>
<p>Deirdre, no matter how high the bar is set, there is a certain type of kid who will put in whatever extra effort is needed to rise to that level. If a school announced one day that henceforth a 95% was needed for an A – there are certain highly ambitious and competitive kids who would respond by simply putting in the effort needed to get 98%. Harvard wants those kids. But I’m not sure that a kid like yours (with a “weak” spot when it comes to homework, a comment you made in a previous post) – wants to be an educational environment filled with those do-or-die 98 percenters. </p>
<p>If there are 2 schools of equal rigor, one of which sets 93% at the bar for an A, and the other which sets the bar at 90% - if anything, the Harvard ad com might prefer the kids from the school with the higher bar. They might see more B’s that way, but the A’s are a little more meaningful. (The schools do send their written grading policy along with the transcript). </p>
<p>It sounds like American is a much better fit for your son. Since he says he is happy there, it sounds like things worked out for the best.</p>
<p>Well, since Harvard has been mentioned, I will say a couple of things.
- my S attended a school that does not weight courses, whether they are CP (though to my knowledge, there is no class in underwater basket weaving or baton twirling); Honors; APs or classes taken at Harvard (nowadays, students can take regular Harvard College classes for high school credit).
- my S never cared for grades. In fact, his not caring for grades made it possible for him to take classes several grade levels higher.
- my S got into Harvard despite not having a 95 or higher GPA.<br>
- I’ll bet some Harvard profs would be happy if some of their students cared more about their academic performance and less about their ECs.</p>
<p>I don’t want the conversation to be fixed on Harvard in particular, it is just one of several things affected by the inaccurate GPA. My main question, now that the frustration is fading, is if he will need the transcript in the future.</p>
<p>Marite, how nice for you! After reading many of your posts, I suspect you are too smart to interpret your son’s experience as GPA not affecting admission…</p>
<p>Calmon-- Son is an very socially adept kid who can be happy anywhere. He does feel his AU classes are too easy (has already moved from the soph level chem class he signed up for to a grad level chem class on the prof’s rec, one week in freshman year). Frankly, I think most students can be happy at most colleges, I just wish son had an accurately graded transcript with the potentially greater range of opportunites.</p>
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<p>Actually in my D’s current school E.C’s are graded and unweighted, so for a student who gets all A’s, the unweighted electives drag her grades down significantly. One of her EC’s last year (policy debate) was more challenging and consumed more time and effort than any of her APs. In her previous school there indeed were classes like Honors Choir, Honors Orchestra, and some other intersting weighted electives. These all required audition and were pretty demanding. The weighting simply ensured that kids who wanted to pursue these electives were not disadvantaged in the grading.</p>
<p>To OP, I completely understand your horror and I sympathize. Thank you for sharing your story here. I like the way your son responded to the news. The important thing is that he is happy where he is. But I would still try to get a corrected high school transcript issued for him, and send it to the relevant office at American for correcting the record. Would he have been eligible for some aid at American if he had a different transcript?</p>
<p>From post #29: Harvard admission “is just one of several things affected by the inaccurate GPA”.</p>
<p>Probably not, unless the school profile sent with the transcript specifically said the advanced course grades were bumped up. If this explanation went out, since your son’s grades were not bumped up, when the GPA was recalculated by the college admissions office, it would have been unfairly bumped down. If there was no explanation sent that said advanced course grades were adjusted, ad coms would have taken them for their “face” value, and done their own evaluation of the high school record based on their recalculated GPA and course rigor/selection.</p>
<p>Clearly, the posts on this thread show that many high schools have different grading systems. The ad coms at most all of the most select schools are aware of discrepancies and adjust GPA’s along with other evaluative criteria.</p>
<p>The real problem for kids from different grade reporting systems is not with the highly selective schools but with schools that admit on transcript GPA, or the scholarships that are awarded to competing kids from schools with different reporting systems.</p>
<p>Deirdre:</p>
<p>I just wanted to combat the impression that Harvard only cares about students who agonize over a 97 instead of a 98. Yes, there are plenty of those at Harvard–and elsewhere. But at Harvard, I have seen more competitiveness in ECS. </p>
<p>Our high school never weighted grades because it claimed that colleges recompute, taking into account only core classes.
I honestly don’t know how some students in S’s school managed to get GPAs above 95. I know that the year he walked off with the Chemistry Prize, his AP-Chem grade was not 95 or above!
As some others have pointed out, strict GPAs are not as important at top schools that take a holistic approach but more important for scholarship purposes and at schools that are more numbers-driven (partly because of having to handle more applications). </p>
<p>I do sympathize with your son. I’m glad that he’s handling it with so much grace. But you are right to want to get the school to explain its grading system: what constitutes an A, a B, a C, etc… It will help other students.</p>
<p>Didn’t read all the posts so if this was already posted, I apologize. If he decides to transfer he will likely use his HS transcript, especially if he does so after his first year at American.</p>
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<p>Oh, I believed that it, in the context of CC, it would be understood that references to Baton Twirling or Basketweaving (and often Underwater Basketweaving) are “plugs” for classes that are do not have much of an academic basis, although they might be extremely competitive such as Baton Twirling in Texas. Fwiw, those classes are often buried under a different moniker, be it Honors Band, Honors Marching Band, or Art IV or something in the genre. </p>
<p>The point was not to deride the existence of those classes and surely not to deride the participation of students in the same classes, but to decry the use of weighted this and weighted that. As it is today, in environments such as Texas, it seems that every class had to carry weights (down and up) to accommodate everyone’s desire to maximize the GPA. </p>
<p>This situation forces parents to do exactly I was advocating, namely be extremely aware of all the policies, procedures, and pre-requisites BEFORE high school even starts. However, while I am “warning” parents about how essential it is to NOT wait until the sophomore or junior year to do so, I am still very much lamenting that is necessary. My opinion is that the entire GPA weighing boondoggle should be drastically reviewed and most gimmicks eliminated. AP courses should return to their original use, being SOLELY used for Advanced Placement … meaning that such course should establish the difficulty of the curriculum only, and not give any CREDIT in college, and surely not be used for admissions’ purposes. In the same vein, the misuse of the IB label (again as it is done in Texas) to consider EVERY class in the program worthy of a GPA boost should be abandoned. </p>
<p>At the end, the ONLY sensible system would be a universal system based on a 0-100 scale with adjustment for very specific and limited courses through the use of INTERNAL curves.</p>
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From what you posted, he did have an “accurately graded” transcript; its just that his school was not complying with the district wide policy. But it reported accurately within the standards that it DID apply – and you have no evidence that it represented otherwise to Harvard or any other school. That is, there is no evidence that the school told Harvard that 90% was an A with the paperwork sent along with the transcript. </p>
<p>So your son’s situation is no different than any other kid who attends one school that applies more competitive standards than a neighboring school.</p>
<p>Sorry to hear that the transcript may have been reported in error. I would be curious to see the School Profile that accompanied the transcript and if your son’s grades did not gel with what was on the School Profile’s grading policy. Check on that. </p>
<p>To me, this is a lesson for all those who come after…I strongly believe that every student should check their transcript to make sure it is correct and accurate because there are instances when it is not. I know my kids checked and there were some mistakes. We also checked the School Profile which was so out of date as to be detrimental to the student because what was on it was NOT what the school was doing in SEVERAL respects…many errors that did not match. They did change the profile to be correct because we took the time to look at it and they never updated it in several areas to reflect current policies, courses, situations. Funny that you mention American because I know one girl from our HS who wanted to go there and was rejected and took a GAP year and found out that her school transcript had a D on it when she was an A student and it was an error. She later attended American after her gap year. Please everyone, check your transcript and school profile before these get sent to colleges. </p>
<p>As far as NYU that was mentioned, I can simply say that my kid got a really good scholarship there. As well, she was selected as a University Scholar (this second thing is unrelated to the scholarships) and she also did not have over a 95 average. BTW, like Marite’s son’s school, our school did not weight grades when my girls attended.</p>
<p>No matter what the implied grading standards of the school, an extra 4 or 5 "B"s are going to make a major difference for admission to a top university.</p>
<p>The obvious thing - why not seek legal advice and sue somebody?</p>
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<p>You are not going to eliminate variations in grading between schools and between different teachers in the same school. Colleges should rely more on SAT subject tests, IMO. GPAs are vulnerable to too much gaming and as this thread shows, are also vulnerable to errors. More so than standardized tests.</p>
<p>VP, I could not agree more about the value of the SAT as a “confirming” tool. Every discussion we have had here on the main value of the SAT or ACT has confirmed that without the existence of standardized tests, it would be impossible to correctly measure the students, and especially not on the GPA. For instance, it is always helpful to remember that, according to the “surveys” culled by the College Board more than 40% of our high schoolers have an A average! </p>
<p>GPA’s will always remain vulnerable, but implementing a modcium of standardization and normalization MIGHT make a dent in the incredible (and questionable) variances among schools, districts, and states. </p>
<p>Reporting grades in high schools should NOT be that complicated! :)</p>
<p>To answer various questions that have come up: Son is already receiving the top merit scholarship from AU and and NMS scholarship from them, so it is unlikely the grades made a difference there. The other opportunities I was talking about were additional monies from schools he may have preferred had they been more affordable. There is no doubt that he gpa prevented his being selected as a Jefferson Scholar (he was actually told by a committee person at the finalist weekend that they were a bit concerned about it), but that is probalby a blessing as he really disliked UVA once he visited for the jefferson weekend and may have felt pressue to go if it was free.</p>
<p>On colleges “recalculating” grades, son’s school does not report a percentage, just a letter grade, so I can’t see how a college can recalculate an A in IB Biology to a B in IB Biology.</p>
<p>As to the post that son was “fairly graded”, I don’t know what that means. He was competing for admission with kids from other schools in the district who were graded on a looser standard-- I don’t care if is “fair” or “unfair”, by our district policy, it shouldn’t have happenned. I can’t believe anyone here seriously believes that at highly selective schools; places where they are looking at large pools of great candidates and trying to winnow them down, that GPA is not a significant factor. Not the only factor, but a significant one.</p>
<p>I think that the remark about sueing someone must have been in jest. The error was clearly utterly accidental, no one was “out to get” the students of my son’s school and whatever “damages” we could establish would just be taken from future students.
Although I am annoyed, I can’t imagine pursueing such a remedy.</p>
<p>Again, thanks all. I have received a couple of messages from posters saying they were asked for HS transcripts years after school, so I will politely push the school to go back and make corrections for as many classes as they are able.</p>