<p>Missypie-- I love your 8th grader’s idea. It makes perfect sense to me. You just do it till you get it right and then move on to the next thing. Very logical.</p>
<p>wow, am I glad our school doesn’t rank.</p>
<p>One of my DDs transferred HSs from a really tough grading school to one with easier grading. She went from probably top 10-20 at her old school to bottom 50% at her new school :eek: Luckily she wanted to attend a small LAC which worked with us to interpret her marks as accurately as possible and to allow her to not count overall average ranking in qualifying for a merit award.</p>
<p>D2’s high school does not rank and PE is not counted toward GPA so at least I don’t one problem that I don’t have to worry about.</p>
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<p>It would at the University of Alabama. Bama doesn’t take any classes out, not even Religion. So, anyone with 4 years of A’s in PE and Religion (or any elective) get a GPA boost! :)</p>
<p>The whole ranking thing is a bit nutty. My son’s school made a major mistake a couple of years ago when somehow a top girl’s GPA somehow was over-looked and she wasn’t listed as she should be. </p>
<p>The problem wasn’t discovered until graduation night when the school announced the 5 seniors with the highest GPA’s - and her name wasn’t there. The audience kind of gasped because we all knew her name should’ve been on the list. Many of us were annoyed at the principal and the school counselor (who made up the list) for not noticing that his #2 student’s name was missing. The parents all noticed; why didn’t THEY.</p>
<p>Actually, an English teacher said something earlier that week when she saw the list, but the English teacher was told, “the list is right!” Well, the list was WRONG. </p>
<p>A week after graduation, the principal sent a letter to all families acknowledging the mistake. Of course, he didn’t name which kid’s name should not have been named to the top five list (but we all knew who that was.)</p>
<p>Just a side note–there’s no top 10% thing or anything like it in NJ, either (contrary to what was mentioned.)</p>
<p>ONly thing I can think of similar is the STARZ program, which is free Community College for top 20%, but I never heard anyone gaming fo that. And that’s probably on its way out with budget woes, anyway.</p>
<p>^^^^^^^
Yep. Here in NJ, there’s the STARS program, but it doesn’t help those high school students who want to start out at a four-year school.</p>
<p>Just tell the kid to do homework for every class every day, get straight As with most rigorous schedule, the rest will fall into proper place without any gimmicks. This was my D’s strategy, no stress, no worries, worked like a charm and still working for her in college (college junior). The rest of the game is just waste of time. My conversation with her happened when she was 5 years old in kindergarden, she understood perfectly, I never had to repeat it.</p>
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<p>LOL, how “CC” of you to assume that is possible for all of our children. The gaming comes for those students who are not perfect. Let’s say the student would get an 82 in the AP version of a class, a 95 in the pre-AP class and a 99 in the regular class. At our school, the weighted result would be:</p>
<p>AP grade: 82 + 12.5 = 94.5</p>
<p>Pre-AP grade: 95 + 10 = 105</p>
<p>Regular grade: 99 + 0 + 99</p>
<p>Thus, this imperfect student would do the best (GPA wise) by taking the pre-AP version, next best by taking the regular class and worst by taking the AP class. But my child wants to take the AP version, leaving her GPA points below all those getting As in the pre-AP and the regular version of the class.</p>
<p>Miami, it does not work with some high schools. I’ve experienced with 2 high schools so far in the same district, one gives more extra credit and the other doesn’t. The standards probably vary with different high schools from different states.</p>
<p>But I think Miami’s point is that if a student gets a 100 on every test in every class, weighting does not matter - the student would get a 100 on General Arithmetic as well as a 100 on AP Calc, so whether one is weighted or not would not matter.</p>
<p>LOL< my daughter actually took “body mechanics” or something PE related online last year. It can be done. She had to come up with appropriate exercise routines, understand muscle groups, food groups, etc. all kinds of bodily related things with exercise, etc…it worked and required lots of documentation, faxing back and forth and “phone conferences” with the teacher. Here in FL, there are many courses available online, in fact my daughter is currently taking “Marine Science” that way. (long story) anyway, here in FL, its called “FLVS”… (Florida Learning Virtual School I think) and its approved by our VERY LARGE school district) and is very widely used and regulated of course.</p>
<p>In Missypie’s example, at our school, a B in AP class would be 4.0, A in honors would be 4.5, and A in “college prep” would be 4.0. So yes, a student would have the best GPA by taking the honors class. Other threads on this forum bemoan the fact that kids feel the need to take 5 and 6 AP’s a year, and suggest they should only take the AP’s that interest them. I don’t have a problem with a kid taking a mix of AP’s and honors, whether it is strictly for their GPA or because they want to have a life. My younger D plays 2 sports, so she took a study hall to get her work done. Some kids take a study hall (rather than a non-weighted class) to improve their GPA. In my older D’s graduating class, the top 10 kids had all taken a lot of AP’s, probably 7-10 each, so I don’t think the ones trying to game the system rose to the top. I’m not sure about the kids just below that, as in the top 10% of the class.</p>
<p>At our school, PE is included in the GPA whether it is taken in the summer or during the year, no online PE offered yet.</p>
<p>^^^ Study hall is weighted???</p>
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<p>In Son’s graduating class, I’m pretty sure that Students #1 and #2 had the HS GPA points chart memorized by 7th grade and did not make a move in HS that did not maximize their GPA. I don’t know if Student #3 was even aware there was a GPA points chart - he took what he wanted and aced eveything.</p>
<p>But I think your point is generally correct. At our HS, the only way you can be at the very top is to take 10-14 AP classes and get high grades in all of them.</p>
<p>I would say that “gamesmanship” plays a big factor in the students falling between the top 8 and 20%s. That’s where you get the overlap of “perfect grades in regular classes” and “less than stellar grades in AP classes.”</p>
<p>youdon’tsay–I think she means that study hall is not a class, thus has no effect on the GPA, as opposed to a non-weighted class which could bring it down, potentially.</p>
<p>Makes sense. Everything counts for our GPA, including study halls, office aide, etc.</p>
<p>Thank you all for your responses.
It looks like it is the top (or near top) kids at this school that are going to worry about maximizing their GPA. The online classes are taken (I believe) in order to free time for weighted classes. And like I said, while I believe that some classes are just dumb for gifted kids to sit through (computer technology, health etc), some, like fine arts or PE just look to me like they are taken online ONLY to boost someone’s GPA.
I wholeheartedly agree with MiamiDAP - my kid chose his classes based on interest and high ability (or what he thought would interest him,as one classes is already a “waste of time” according to him) and he knows that it is very important to get very good grades.</p>
<p>The way our school wieghts classes is this: 0.05 is added for honors class and 0.1 is added for an AP/IB class (as far as I remember, can’t check till planner gets back home) so the differences between the kids will probably come to two, three numbers after the decimal, which is crazy.</p>
<p>By the way, I am not extremely stressed out by the whole situation. I believe I am like most of you here: having very bright kid whom I am trying to guide throught this jungle so he will be in the best possible place when it comes to admission time. He is not the kind of a kid that will play to kill in order to be val or sal - I can’t say that he does not care but just does not care hard enough. He wants to though (at least now)apply to very selective colleges . I know that his situation will be unique, but I still do not want to think three years down the road that because we did not stay on top of things he did not get a full ride to such and such school or was not admitted to such and such school.</p>
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<p>I am so happy that I can check my kids grades on the computer. Teachers are human and they make mistakes. Early this year, D had a 9 for a test grade. I thought that might be possible if it had been a scantron and D had gotten a row off or something. I asked D and she said her grade was a 94 but that only the 9 had been entered. There was about a 15 point difference in her 6 week grade once that was fixed.</p>
<p>Every year I find a couple of really big gradebook errors. (Last year, the computer showed that Son got a 0 on a test because he didn’t turn it in. Only Son did turn it in…the teacher had just placed it in a different stack of papers.)</p>
<p>Some kids are very diligent about knowing their grades and making sure the teacher gets everything right, but others are more laid back about it. A few misplaced zeroes can really hurt a student’s GPA.</p>
<p>We had this ranking thing at our house last spring. D took exact the same course as Val all past 4 years at HS except D continued taking Band all four years. Band is not AP or Honor. The Val kid took the same amount of APs and Honors but one class short in Senior year (a free period). We did not know this is going to be an issue until March. D was so sad (angry, should I say?) about the situation but there was nothing we can do. Does it matter? There is no answer for it. We as parents don’t care but did argue with school for our D’s sake. School claimed that they never had the situation and there is not much they can do to fix it. D goes to her first choice college now. The ranking system does have flaws in it and some students or even parents know how to get around to get that top spot.</p>