UC application. How to indicate the trend of grades?

Applying to College
1

<p>Hi,</p>

<p>I know CC is being bombarded by lots of questions at this crucial time. We are sorry for taking your attention to some minor looking questions. Please forgive us, and if possible, do let us know your valuable and studied opinion.</p>

<p>We know that the UC grades need to be reported after stripping them down with "+" or "-" suffix in "HIGH SCHOOL COURSES AND GRADES". And we have done so. However, for the additional information section, there is a question in this regards.</p>

<p>Q1. My son's grades progressed during his high school as follows:</p>

<p>GRADES [FIRST SEMESTER]] THEN [SECOND SEMESTER]]</p>

<p>9th: [3 A, B-, 2 B]; THEN [3 A, B, 2 B+] <------> 2 honors courses (science, math)</p>

<p>10th: [2 A-, 4 A]; THEN [6 A] <------> 2 honors + 1 AP (science, math, history)</p>

<p>11th: [4 A, 2 A+]; THEN [2 A, 4 A+] <-------> 2 honors + 2 AP (math, CS, history, language)</p>

<p>Summer: A+ ------- A College Course in Computer Science</p>

<p>So, there is a steady and noticeable trend of grades moving up, even though the course difficulties increased considerably, which I think universities may like to see. Is it worth highlighting this in the additional information section since this information is not captured in the way UC asks grades to be reported. They will not see "-" or "+".</p>

<p>However, we have a lot of other important information that we are trying to write in the additional information section and we do not want to irritate them with this information if this is not important. Grades seem quite important to UC but not sure what to do here.</p>

<p>Q2. Also, if it is worth indicating for UC, then should this type of grade trend be reported in CommonApp too (additional information section)?</p>

<p>Many many many thanks!</p>

2

<p>Admissions can see for themselves that there is an upward trend in grades. No need to point it out to them.</p>

3

<p>@Gumbymom, Thanks. But since one can only write the “basic class of grade” such as A or B or C, and since one cannot indicate the A-/A+ in the grade column, how would they know that there is a continued upward trend? All they will see is that the B moved to A since you are not allowed to put the “+” or “-”. That is, they cannot see that B- moved to B+ then moved to A- then to A and then to A+ </p>

<p>The point is, by stripping the grade of these nuances, does not one also strip lot of information and intelligence from the data.</p>

<p>In particular see that in <a href=“http://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/freshman/how-applications-reviewed/”>http://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/freshman/how-applications-reviewed/&lt;/a&gt;
they say that one of the factor in their evaluation of an application is:
“Recent, marked improvement in academic performance as demonstrated by academic GPA and the quality of coursework completed or in progress.”</p>

<p>Does anyone has had an experience or a clear understanding about the importance of the semester to semester grade trend or does it has only a limited utility? Would be great to hear a variety of other opinions too (as well as of Gumbymom’s studied opinion too), Again, this can be a topic where your viewpoints can be useful in guiding the present as well as the future readers.</p>

4

<p>If you wanted to include it, you could find a way to condense it, such as: “Philip’s maturity as a student progressed over the eight semesters of high school as seen by his (weighted) semester GPAs: [3.45; 3.57; …].” That may allow you to make your point and leave space for the other important information. You could probably condense even more with some effort. Good luck!</p>

5

<p>This seems to be a lot of worrying about what is probably a matter of minor to trivial importance.</p>

<p>He has a 4.0 unweighted in 10th-11th, and an admissions reader who looks at his courses and grades will see that he improved from 3.5 unweighted in 9th to 4.0 unweighted in 10th-11th. Is that not an obvious enough upward trend?</p>

6

<p>Those gradations are not important to them. And as this is his application, do not refer to himself in the 3rd person or act as if someone else is making remarks about him on his application. Don’t overstuff the additional information section either. You don’t want the main points to be buried in trivial data.</p>