Do a lot of you all have kids that have weighted honors classes at their school? My D goes to a school that does not give extra weight to honors classes. So like her honors world history class is a 4.0 if she get an A, no more even though it’s considered honors. The AP classes and accelerated classes are worth more. Like Spanish 3 is accelerated so it’s worth like 4.3 or something if she gets an A. Just wondered if others have this . The neighboring state gives weight to honors classes so I guess every area is different…
I would think the more important issue is whether the colleges your D applies to take weighted GPA; some do not. Also. colleges that use weighted GPA don’t necessarily weight them the same way as the high school.
Yeah I guess at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter . I just wasn’t aware some states/counties are different with their high school grades etc. I don’t have other kids so first experience with high school GPA etc in the state I live in.
The high school I went to didn’t weight honors classes (only weighted AP classes) and there were no “accelerated” classes. But lots of kids who post on CC have their honors classes weighted. Every school is different.
Most colleges that consider weighted GPA either recalculate using their own weighting, or look in context of the high school’s weighting system, though a few seem to accept that high school’s weighting (e.g. Alabama uses the weighted GPA shown on the high school transcript for scholarship qualification, so if the high school has exaggerated weighting like +2 for honors and AP courses, that can help a student gather such a scholarship at Alabama).
My son’s private HS didn’t have “honors” designated on the transcript because all the classes were considered honors other than AP classes.
But FF to college—the state university recalculates the GPA based on honors and AP and it HAD to be DESIGNATED ON the transcript as an honors class or there was no extra weight given.
Yes, in the HS school description etc there was info about the HS school difficulty but since the initial sorting of applicants for college by GPA was done by a computer the admission people would never see it unless flagged in some way which you simply could not count on happening.
The HS subsequently redesignated their classes as honors putting in on the transcripts and recalculated GPAs based on it.
It’s up to the college how to recalculate a GPA but it was important for the HS to indicate if a class was considered as honors on the transcript.
Wisconsin (UW-Madison) uses the unweighted gpa. This means all weighting is removed. Son’s WI HS did not weight grades. UW also looks at the rigor of classes taken compared to those offered. This means that if a school has a lot of honors/AP classes and the student does not take advantage of them that hurts. Likewise the student with few opportunities at the HS is not hurt by that. HS’s give statements as to whether the student took the more/less rigorous courses available on the form they submit.
Do not worry about it. Colleges are used to converting things when apples and oranges grading comes their way.
My kids’ HS only weights AP and IB classes. Honors and “on level” classes are on a 4 scale, the AP and IB on a 5 scale. It really disincentivizes my kids from taking any honors classes-they’re either in AP, IB, or on level (breather classes, they call them). What stinks is for freshman year they only were allowed to take 1 AP class-all the other classes were honors, and more difficult (duh) than the on levels. So they took the honors classes, despite the logical choice being to coast through the on levels. We’re still not sure if that was a good idea.
Yes, my son attends a high school that has a weighted GPA. He has a 3.45 UW and a 4.23 W. I am not sure what the scale is. AP classes are weighted higher than regular or honors. I would not worry about it though. I think the college admission people are used to both.
My son also goes to a small private school that does not weight GPAs and considers all of it’s classes taught on an Honors level. This is noted on the School Profile that accompanies his transcript but not right on his transcript per se. His school assures the students and parents however that the school’s reputation is well know among college admissions officers and that it is all taken into consideration.
At my D’s school honors and AP classes are weighted an extra 0.5 (so an A=4.5). I think the difference in grading/difficulty exceeds that 0.5 GPA boost. At my nephew’s HS, honors classes are weighted an extra 1.0, and AP an extra 2.0. Another nephew goes to a school with no weighting. It makes a big difference if you’re looking at colleges that give scholarships based on your weighted GPA. At other colleges that only look at unweighted grades, it makes no difference at all. There are kids at our HS who try the honors classes and drop down when they realize they can get an easy A in the regular class (which is still college prep and very challenging) but are getting a C in the honors version.
Our large public in CA weights honors, AP, IB, and dual-enrollment as a +1. Everything is on a 4.0 scale, and + and - grades are shown on the transcript but have no effect on the GPA. That’s pretty much what the UC system does for their weighted capped GPA, except that you can count a max of 8 semester +1s in 10th and 11th and most honors classes aren’t weighted (except precalculus honors at most high schools).
I would expect that in CA, most schools do something similar to the UC weighting, because the UC system has such a strong influence and has very detailed admissions info on the web, including a database of all approved high school classes in the state. Even if you look up the course lists for selective privates in CA, few of their non-AP courses are weighted according to UC standards.
https://hs-articulation.ucop.edu/agcourselist#/list/details/2893/
https://hs-articulation.ucop.edu/agcourselist#/list/details/3531/