<p>I talked to the administrators at my kids' high school, and they said that an A or A-, regular, honors, or AP, all count as 4.0...in other words, no GPA advantage for taking honors or above courses, and no penalty for taking regular courses or getting an A-. Is this unusual? Seems like everybody on CC has a GPA above 4.0.</p>
<p>dont worry. the school will send an explanation of this to the colleges. So, the school will “know” who took the hardest schedules</p>
<p>Legions of threads on the topic of GPA weighting, so you can search.</p>
<p>The consensus, when my kid was applying - a few years ago now, but I don’t think this has changed - the selective U’s ignore the high schools’ weighting computations because there is no consistency in how it is done. They do their own weighting - yes, a clerical person in the Admissions staff handles this (or the data entry for the computer to handle it).</p>
<p>Schmaltz, get ahold of a copy of the school’s profile and make sure that the grading policy is explained. If it’s not, you can offer to update and redesign the profile. Then make sure that the GPA calculation is detailed.</p>
<p>Neither of my kids schools- a private prep & inner city public magnet weighted GPA.
While the public school ranked students, the prep school did not. Both schools have high % of students attending selective 4 yr colleges.
I agree that colleges often do their own calculations.
Anything besides core classes may be tossed out to get a gpa that may better reflect college potential.</p>
<p>My kids’ HS did the normal weighting where an AP course was on a 5.0 scale vs. a 4.0 scale. I know the UCs don’t care how the HS weights the classes - the UCs recalculate the GPA themselves where they only accept certain approved courses as weighted and have a max number of courses that can count as weighted.</p>
<p>I’m very surprised that there isn’t a difference between an A and an A-. That would be very unusual. I agree that the school profile is the place to start, to understand what information is being reported to colleges. The second place to look is the student handbook, which should have a more detailed explanation of the process that the HS uses to calculate GPA.</p>
<p>There is no weighting at my kids’ school (private independent). So AP/honors/regular all count for the same. The counselor does provide info on whether the student took the most difficult course schedule available to colleges. And most of the colleges our kids apply to are familiar with the school. As stated above, most colleges recalculate the GPA themselves.</p>
<p>It is unusual, I think, for an A- to be 4.0 (in most systems I have seen, that would be a 3.7). Schools are less consistent on whether they give a 4.3 for an A+… (not that my kids have ever had the opportunity to test this - hah).</p>
<p>I don’t see how the admission office can track all these information. Students at our schools take mixture of high level courses. Sometimes, there are 3-4 levels; AP, advanced, level 1 and level 2. Some students take AP in one subject but other level for other subjects, and this is just our schools. I am sure they are dealing with thousands of other high schools.</p>
<p>Plenty of students at our schools take lower level courses and get into top 20 schools. While some other students that take higher level courses with worse GPA gets into not as good of a school.</p>
<p>Just as a point of information, the School Profile is not a useful source of data at some schools. Maybe it is a state-by-state phenomenon. I read a lot of posters here at CC talking about the School Profile, and when I checked with our counselor, she looked at me like I was crazy. When I read our School Profile, it was just a few vague sentences.</p>
<p>Weighted grades can help or hurt individual students depending on a myriad of details specific to the student. Sometimes both at the same time. It leads to a bunch of gaming and strategy games among the high-ranking students that is almost always non-productive, in my opinion.</p>
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<p>In which case it should be redone. I overhauled the profile for D1’s school this year. The GC was delighted that someone volunteered to spiff it up, and this year’s admissions results were better than usual. Win-win all around.</p>
<p>If an adcom isn’t familiar with your kid’s school, then the profile is what’s going to put your child’s record in context. For kids at the OP’s school, it’s entirely possible that the academic stars of the class might not be the val or sal–or might even be outside the top 5% or 10%. If the school profile explains that all courses are weighted equally, that helps the adcom understand why a kid with a highly rigorous schedule isn’t at the top of the class.</p>
<p>Slithey, now I’m curious. What does this kind of detailed profile look like? Do you just list out every course in the school and the level of difficulties of each course? Our profile just says we do not do weighted gpa and that is about it.</p>
<p>Also how could it be win-win for everyone? One kid looks better with more accurate profile, but that must mean some kids will look worse with the said profile.</p>
<p>ttparent, D1’s school profile includes:</p>
<p>*description of school community and socioeconomics;
*grading and class rank calculation, e.g. AP courses are weighted, Honors aren’t, class rank is based on weighted GPA;
*Average SAT/ACT score breakdown;
*Previous year’s AP test results: # of students taking each test, % who receive a 3 or higher;
*Honors and distinctions from previous year: academic team wins, national essay winners and competitive summer program participation, NMSF/NMF statistics, AP awards statistics;
*Summary of school curriculum (specifies if course is honors or AP where applicable) and schedule, including notes on required classes;
*List of colleges currently attended by the school’s graduates</p>
<p>That all fits on one double-sided sheet. I’ve seen other profiles that run to two double-sided sheets. That white space looks very nice, but our school couldn’t afford it. 
A school can also opt to provide more detail for any of the above, including a histogram of GPAs and the distribution of grades in each and every course. </p>
<p>As for win-win for everyone: it really seems to have worked out that way, at least for this particular school. The school is an entry-by-test public magnet, so all of the students are of high caliber. The profile could emphasize the challenging curriculum and the deflationary grading. For a kid at the top of the GPA, that meant that the adcom could see that they were a star among stars. For a kid (like mine ) back in the pack, it meant that the adcom could see that they did reasonably well with a highly challenging curriculum. </p>
<p>Keep in mind that there are many, many other high schools putting out carefully crafted school profiles that are designed to maximize their students’ admissions chances. A high school that just submits a few perfunctory sentences is doing their students no favors.</p>
<p>I see. We have some of those information (SAT, ACT, GPA histogram) but again, our school does not do weighting or class rank. Still, how does adcom understands how good is one’s GPA compared to the others when they take various level courses at our school is beyond me.</p>
<p>If the school isn’t academically homogeneous, then there’s no way for the adcoms to know from the profile how the student with a rigorous schedule did, GPA-wise, in comparison with the other students with rigorous schedules. That’s where the GC and teacher recommendations come into play.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/142083-high-school-profiles-do-you-have-links-good-ones.html?highlight=high+school+profile[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/142083-high-school-profiles-do-you-have-links-good-ones.html?highlight=high+school+profile</a></p>
<p>I understand that the GC gives inputs on this, and teacher may have some say. I don’t get to see any of those recommendations but I still have hard time understanding that could really make a huge difference in differentiating. First, teachers are hand picked by the student and GC has to write several hundreds of these without really knowing the students and probably mainly from some questionnaire they pass out to the students.</p>
<p>The game-playing is ridiculous. At my kids’ school, the jock parents recently lobbied for the inclusion of something called “Honors Gym” (yes, really). Now, the kids who are taller or better at catching a ball get a bump in their GPA. Can you even believe that?</p>
<p>I think Honors Cafeteria should be added as well. Not sure whether you’d get more GPA points for higher consumption or better nutrition, but clearly some recognition is deserved.</p>
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<p>My kids’ school uses +/- for the quarter grades, but for the semester grades (which is what goes into the calculation of GPA), it’s just A, B, C, etc. (though weighted so that A= 5.0 for an honors or AP class).</p>
<p>And no, I don’t believe for a minute that elite schools with 30,000 applicants pay someone to manually enter transcript information into some massive excel spreadsheet that re-calculates according to their formula. This is inconsistent with everything these schools reveal about their processes time and time again, which is that they essentially squint at the number on the transcript and mentally figure out “is this kid smart enough” or not, at which point they go on to other criteria. Spare me from the nonsense that they sit there and determine that one high school doesn’t count gym in the GPA and this high school does, or that this high school weights honors at 4.5 and AP at 5.0 but that high school weights both at 5.0, or that this high school uses A+/A/A- but that high school only uses A’s. Do you have any idea how much manpower it would take to do that for 30,000 applicants when it’s all delivered on paper?</p>