<p>I actually do think that colleges recompute the grades. They just have data entry people (maybe at minimum wage? maybe as work-study?) type in the #s based on the various grading systems out there. The formats have probably been set up eons ago. The unis have predetermined how they will do the weighting, and it’s different at each uni. (Is it Johns Hopkins that does not weight at all?) Possibly they may save time by not keypunching transcripts below a certain GPA. Once the data is entered, the computer probably gives info on the the GPAs available, and they make the second cut by this GPA (and SAT/SAT2/ACT, whose data is downloaded electronically). Then they can start holistically evaluating the remainder. It’s much easier to have data entry people handle the transcripts of 30K applicants than to deal with the whole application of 30K applicants. Since they do this year after year, automation will be their friend. Why re-invent the wheel every year? Having the computer do it will be more reliable than a “squint.”</p>
<p>At the UCs, the applicants type in the data themselves, thus cutting out the middle man. The computer makes some of the first few cuts, and sorts the students based on different data. They actually only compare the self reported grades to the transcripts after the student is accepted. </p>
<p>Sorry that this does address the val question, though.
Yes, I remember reading in some book that states that statistically, admission chances were much better if one was a val than if one was #5 or something like that. D went to a school that didn’t rank, so it’s slightly liberating to have 1 less thing to factor in when choosing classes. (She would not even been close to val, though, if HS did rank; uber college prep private school.) I liked a poster’s comment to take web design at a cc, especially since the intro level material is fairly easy.</p>
<p>Our kids’ school(s) didn’t rank except for Val and Sal. We were told that the most important piece of information was how the GC checked off a student’s academic performance percentile (top 10%, top 5%, top 2%).</p>
<p>No, they do not all recalculate. You can probably find some list of those beyond CA (and maybe TX) who might, but not where I work. And, I’d guess, in general, it’s not common practice. The student workers have other, more needed things to do. Budgets are too tight for things like this (even H cut its adcom travel budget- you think it’s to pay for recalculators?) And, adcoms look at transcripts, know the rigor of the school, the grading scale, whether any rank is based on weighted or unweighted (and more details.) They look for rigor/grades and the completeness of the courses load.</p>
I think that’s also one of the reasons many schools have regional admissions officers. They get to know the schools and what the grading systems mean. Our school weighted grades and ranked students, but the system was screwy enough that occasionally a student who was not on the AP track would sneak into the top 2%. They did not get into the same colleges as those taking more rigorous courses. I think colleges probably do put down some sort of guess about how good a student is, but I don’t think they are making distinctions between 3.77 at school A vs. 3.72 at school B.</p>
<p>I don’t think webdesign sounds like an “important course”. I think it sounds like fluff. But I think it’s fine for a kid to take it, especially if they need an art elective anyway.</p>
<p>The grade point scale and whether rank is calculated based on w or uw shows on the GC report and all the other relevant details are usually covered in the School Profile, incl weighting formulas, what constitutes an A, whether there are + or-, what the avail APs are, etc.</p>
<p>^ we loook at whatever we get. Some kid who’s 3.9UW out of 4, is not better or worse off than another who is 4.2W out of 4. We look at the transcript.</p>
<p>Very few highly selective colleges are going to take a weighted HS GPA at face value for the simple reason that high schools use radically different weighting systems, or in some cases none at all. Many colleges will use unweighted GPA on a straight 4.0 scale, where A or A+ = 4.0, regardless of course rigor. Some will consider only “core” academic courses, or the “big five”–math, science, English, history/social science, and foreign language. Some will discount freshman grades.</p>
<p>But HS GPA may not matter as much as many applicants think it does. Class rank (top 10%) will help a college’s US News ranking; GPA doesn’t. Beyond that, the rigor of the applicant’s HS curriculum relative to what’s available at that HS is going to weigh heavily and could easily trump “objective” numbers like GPA.</p>
<p>My son and his friend just missed top 5% in their class. They had almost all As, but they had a lot of unweighted classes (mostly music). But they had superb SAT/ACT scores and fine ECs and to accepted at some great schools, including at least on Ivy in the mix.</p>
<p>I was really hoping my D. would take webdesign, along with journalism. But those two, plus a tech ed which is required, are three regular courses that’d lower her GPA. At the same time, we were also thinking, like some of you pointed out, a regular (not even honors) webdesign course is probably not even worth taking - she may know more than what the course will teach her, just from messing around with the web stuff. She will take journalism. For juniors, journalism is a regular class. For seniors it might be an honors class, so at least she might get honors credit from that in her senior year. She wants to be a staff member or even a editor in chief or something for her school newspaper, and the only way to get there is through taking these two courses. </p>
<p>BTW, how many AP courses did your junior students take? I mean those who challenged themselves. She is looking at 4. She is taking two this year. She took one in her freshman year.</p>
<p>Whether GPA is recalculated by the colleges is completely beside the point when it comes to the valedictorian designation.</p>
<p>Recalculating GPA is a way to compare students across many different grading systems. Class ranking is a way to compare students within a single grading system.</p>
<p>The only way that GPA recalculation could undo or weaken a valedictorian honor for admission purposes would be if all the top students from the same high school somehow happened to apply to the same college, and the recalculated grades arranged the students in a different rank order than the one the high school provided. And the college then bothered to pull all that information together on a high school-by-high school basis to determine their own internal “class rank” for each high school represented in their applicant pool.</p>
<p>I doubt that they get that deeply into it. I bet, if it’s considered at all, the val honor is just a box that is checked or an honor listed on the side that provides a slight boost to the kid based on taking the high school’s word for it. I doubt they recompute all their own “true” val honors for each high school.</p>
<p>I’m old school…I don’t think a sophomore in high school should be concerned with positioning themselves for valedictorian. I think they should be taking classes that excite and challenge them and getting involved in activities, sports, clubs that inspire them.</p>
<p>I agree that UW and W tell different stories. What I don’t agree with is the concept that private schools with 25,000 applications all pore through transcripts to the point of entering them all in a spreadsheet, pulling out which ones aren’t core academic courses, and recalculating them all. Determining what is a core academic course is more difficult than it seems – what about schools that offer more periods a day or allow a student to take both English and Shakespearean Plays? Lookingforward says his / her school doesn’t and that’s good enough for me.</p>
<p>I can appreciate that at Brown, Valedictorians are accepted at a higher rate than Salutatorians (and so on down the class list). But is this a causation or merely correlation? I can also understand that the Valedictorian at a school is likely to have the best academic stats in a number of areas (standardized tests, department awards, etc.). For the sake of argument, if only one more variable is added to the Brown analysis, would the relationship hold up? Would the data be the same looking at all #1 versus #2 where SAT scores at each score level are identical? I suspect there isnt much of a difference when more factors are included.</p>
<p>Coureur, the recalculation is not beside the point if the school treats all classes equally. This is not the question in this case because the OP is concerned about her daughter taking unweighted courses that will lower her gpa. But in our town’s local high school, all classes are treated equally, honors, AP, regular. Therefore the valedictorian is, often enough, a good student who has not taken the most challenging courses offered by the school. Without those classes, that person is not in the best position to get into the most competitive schools and those who are seemingly lower ranked are. If colleges are not simply looking at the valedictorian label but are looking to see what’s on the transcript, the recalculation matters.</p>
<p>My D took all the AP courses offered by her high school except one: Art History. She opted to be part of the school’s varsity tennis team instead. It cost her the top spot because the AP classes got extra points. The three kids ahead of her did not participate in any music classes beyond the one required class and did not participate in any sports or any other activity that took a class period away from an AP class. Does it really look good to college admissions officers to game the system like that? </p>
<p>But the school recognized this and D got more awards than anyone else at the school. </p>
<p>Did it hurt her college admissions choices? NO. She got into every school she applied to but one.</p>
<p>A sophomore is too soon to think about val or sal. Take the classes you like and want. If you were a senior and the last semester classes would make a difference, I would say do it, but you have two years ahead of you to enjoy and learn what you are interested in.</p>
<p>(I am not a big fan of these tricks - my daughter’s class val took a study hall senior year because there were no classes he could take that were weighted and he did not want to have his GPA go down. Meanwhile, my daughter had 4 years of chorus - unweighted - and still managed to end up in the top 2%).</p>
<p>The fact of the matter is: You either starting thinking about it from sophomore year or earlier, or don’t bother to think about it at all. </p>
<p>TainG’s D shows a good example. </p>
<p>But, if your D. really wants to be a val, make a plan. Having that goal is not a bad thing, but tell her don’t get too upset if she doesn’t get it because she is involved with other things while the Val person is not. Like in the case of TatinG’s daughter, it’s worthwhile to sacrifice that title.</p>