<p>I think I push my kid hard enough. I just got word of some interesting shenannigans going on at our small school. We graduate about 55/yr. Seems that a kid in the senior class, as well as one in my son's junior class, are adding silly little bs classes like AP Independent Study (whatever that means..and one wants their mommy to be their supervising teacher for the independent study), as well as less than challenging dual credit classes all to boost their GPA. Neither one of the kids come even close to the SAT scores of my son or the current #1 kid in the senior class. My kid does so many EC's (football, baseball, UILx3, FCA, etc.) that I reched my limit and just told my 4.0 UW kid to just do his very best, realizing that he'll likely lose out to the weighted classes. He's taking all the AP and Honors courses our school offers, but can't give up the athletics and doesn't want to take dual credit that he really isn't even interested in. I say OK.
To the other parents out there, should I push just a little more, or just say sorry, we're not going to play. I think the ranking thing just gets out of hand. Its weak that they add these classes after the school year starts, and the administration panders to these kids that are just working the system. Seems they can't get it done on a level playing field, so they have to grab hold to a gimmick. I don't think the dual credit's should be weighted, 'cause not eveyone has the same opportunity to take 'em. Somebody tell me where I'm wrong.</p>
<p>I’m not a parent, sorry for answering this thread if it isn’t allowed.</p>
<p>From my conversations with admissions officers (from Stanford, University of Virginia, Harvard, and others) the most important factor in college admissions is course pattern. Most application forms filled out by a counselor include a section that asks them “did this student seek the most challenging courses offered at your schools”</p>
<p>The point I’m trying to make is that I would encourage your student to take the most challenging courses possible alongside the most amount of EC’s they can reasonably afford to take. A high GPA for a kid with a load of difficult AP courses (Chemistry, Calculus) and a stack of EC’s (sports, etc) looks better than a perfect GPA across easier AP classes and a thin after school schedule.</p>
<p>Either way, enjoying high school is important. Your student should be happy before they’re anything else. I firmly believe that. Writing a positive, spirited application essay is important.</p>
<p>You’re not wrong. But you can’t control other people - you can only control yourself (and to some extent your kid). If your kid does the best HE can do, then let the chips fall where they may. </p>
<p>Frankly I’ve never heard of AP Independent Study. Unless it’s to take a period to study on your own for an AP class your school doesn’t offer. If the kid is a senior, they’re going to have to tell the college what they’re studying for to make it believable. If they’re a junior, then next year the colleges will be looking for the AP score. As for the dual enrollment courses, the course title will be on the transcript. If it’s “basketweaving” the colleges will recognize it for what it is.</p>
<p>Encourage your kid to be positive and focus on his strengths, and not to worry about anyone else.</p>
<p>My D knows a girl who abuses the absence system at our school. She has a standing doctor’s note for a long term condition (migraines, or something like that). According to D, this girl was absent for virtually every test in the honors science class they took together last year. She’d come in the next day and ask the other kids what was on the test, then study for it and make it up. The girl got an A in the class. It’s annoying, but I told D it’s not her problem and there’s no point in upsetting herself over it.</p>
<p>Very frustrating. Don’t know about the dual credit stuff, but can’t imagine AP Independent Study could even be a legitimate class. Maybe you can go and ask the admin for the criteria and ask to see the policy for doing one of these as you’re interested in arranging one for your son. Imagine your shock at not finding one. Really, they need to formulate and have a policy approved by the school board before students could participate.</p>
<p>Seems like there’s no system that can’t be gamed by an enterprising student/parent. We have no weighting at all, and most of the 4.0 valedictorians never took an honors class their whole career. Took their easy regular classes, got their scholarships at the state schools and their pictures and write ups in the paper. They finally started requiring ‘1’ honors class/semester to be a val. It’ll be interesting to see how many we have left with this ‘stringent’ requirement.</p>
<p>Thanks for the replies so far. My son has taken/is taking/will take all the AP’s the school offers(calculus, biology, chemistry) as well as dual credits this year and next. Just don’t want him to not participate in the other events, to include UIL number sense (went to state last year as a sophomore), math, etc., just to achieve the title of valedictorian. I think thats the wrong goal. Theirs more to life than chasing after dollars and titles.</p>
<p>We agree. One of the more unpleasant lessons of life is that there’s always someone trying to get an unfair advantage. I tell my kids that they have to do what they believe is fair. After all, they themselves have many unfair advantages over the 99.9% of the world population by dint of where they were born.</p>
<p>RELAX. Many HS’s don’t rank their students. If you take a look at the statistics of accepted students on the Common Data sets for many top colleges, often only 55-60% of accepted students were ranked. Brown’s Common Data set for 2008 show that only 41% of accepted students were ranked.</p>
<p><a href=“Office of Institutional Research | Brown University”>Office of Institutional Research | Brown University;
What matters is the classes your son takes, the grades he earns, his SAT scores, EC’s, his letters of recommendations, etc. Take a look at the Class Profile that your school sends to colleges with the transcripts- that is what College admissions officers look at closely to see how students compare to one another as well as to students from other schools.You may want to look at the Common Data sets for the colleges that he is considering applying to, in order to get a realistic idea of how he compares to recently accepted students.
And there is no class called AP Independent study that is valid in the eyes of the Collegeboard.</p>
<p>Take a look at this link to see the complete list of valid AP classes
<a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools;
<p>OP - I wouldn’t worry about it. My son graduated with a 4.0 uw and a 4.71 w and was just outside of the top 5% of his class. He took the hardest schedule possible (including no lunch period or study period), but also took as many music classes as he could. The music classes (as well as some mandatory PE type classes) were not weighted which brought his ranking down. He did very well on his SATs, SATIIs and ACTs and is presently attending one of the best colleges in this country. Many of his “higher ranking” fellow graduates are not. It might have been more annoying if he went to a college where the val or sal get a free ride.</p>
<p>There have been many threads on this subject. There have been all different reasons–kids wanting to take unweighted electives and stories like yours.</p>
<p>The bottom line is that colleges care about rank. If you keep that in mind and will be OK if your kid is not top 2, or top 5% or whatever is necessary for some top colleges and you’re both fine with that, don’t play the game.</p>
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<p>Note that many colleges, especially top ones, figure out a rank for all the unranked students.</p>
<p>"Note that many colleges, especially top ones, figure out a rank for all the unranked students. "
of course, but in doing so, they don’t weigh equally tough AP courses and fluff, filler courses taken in an effort to “nudge” GPA upward. They compare apples with apples.</p>
<p>Well, I can promise you they’re not going to be able to take an AP Independent Studies test at the end of the year, and no college is going to not realize that it’s a fake class. </p>
<p>And as other people are saying, I can tell you my high school neigher weighed nor ranked. </p>
<p>Again as others said, colleges will like at what it took and evaluate his schedule on their own. They’ll throw out fake APs.</p>
<p>how can they figure out a rank for unranked students? What kind of variables/data do they use?</p>
<p>I disagree strongly that the dual credit classes shouldn’t be weighted because not everyone has the chance to take them. My S is busting his butt with two college level classes offered online by JHU-CTY, linear algebra last year and multivariable calculus this year. The mumbo jumbo I got from the school district is that weighted credit is for certain honors and AP classes taken at the school, only. Supposedly, this is another one of those inane decisions made at the state level. My hunch is that the teachers or administrators just don’t want to deal with analyzing the curriculum of the outside class to determine whether the weighting equal to AP is merited.</p>
<p>He busted his butt for that linear algebra class and got an unweighted A. We think it made the difference in his landing a summer research internship. I think the educational bureaucracy is beyond lame that he could not get weighted credit for it. He worked harder to get his A in this class than for any AP class, including Calculus BC and Physics C.</p>
<p>So yeah, it ****ed us off. But we finally dropped the anger, more or less, in the hopes that having these classes prominently noted on the HS transcript will negate whatever extra bump being a val might have been worth. The smart kids “in the know” at the HS know very well he’s the “go to” guy for math questions and he enjoys tutoring them.</p>
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<p>School profile, which often gives grade distribution and other info, historical data on applicants from the school and having work study students call counselors when not enough info is there. One of my jobs during college.</p>
<p>“how can they figure out a rank for unranked students? What kind of variables/data do they use?” </p>
<p>School profiles often break down GPA’s by deciles- the top 20% of seniors had GPA’S between 3.93-4.14, the next decile of seniors had GPA’S between 3.75-3.92, etc, etc. So no individual student is ranked, but colleges can get a very good idea of how one student compares to another. My son, had a[ relatively] rocky start to HS for a “gifted” student- he received all B’s his freshman year .At the end of his HS career his overall GPA was 3.80, which put him at the top of the 2nd decile of seniors at his school. But his SAT and subject scores were the same or better than those at the top of the 1st decile. He was accepted at 14/15 colleges, including 3 of the top 10 USNews ranked colleges.</p>
<p>Personally, having been a regional rep in a past life, I don’t have as much confidence as others do that all of them make the effort to parse an applicants performance in the context of their school. At some schools an independent study is truly challenging. </p>
<p>It’s not easy to go to bat for a kid who does not appear to have the requisite rank from a school you don’t know well.</p>
<p>Sure, like the College Board even has an AP Ind Study test. I’d be front and center at the next school board meeting with a screen shot of the CB AP page.</p>
<p>I’m not that confident that colleges can figure out a rank based on a school profile. I just picked up our school profile, and while it gives the percentage of kids who go on to college and explains our school’s weighting system, it does not break down where the GPA’s fall into deciles, or give any info an an “average” GPA for the school or what percentage of kids take honors/AP classes.</p>
<p>But then again, our school does rank students (by deciles) so maybe they don’t need to put that info on the school profile.</p>
<p>After talking to a friend, the Independent study is not AP, its dual credit. Still basically the same issue in my mind. Its a weighted grade under who knows what control and/or supervision. Seems made up just to boost a GPA. No consistancy of grading standards whatsoever. I know Im not going to change the system, so Im going to stop worrying about the whole issue, and just let my son do the best at what he does. I do appreciate all the inputs from other parents.</p>
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<p>Good idea.</p>