Weighted/Unweighted GPA & some other Qs

Parents Forum
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<p>I am pretty new to this site (and to this experience). I see many references to weighted GPAs, but am not entirely sure I understand how they are calculated or when (or if) they are actually used by colleges in the admission or merit aid process. I assume that a "weighted" GPA somehow gives greater weight to advanced or AP courses. If so, how? My son is at a school with a 4.0 scale. I have never seen any reference to "weighting" in the reports we get from his school. He has taken just about all the advanced courses offered, with mixed results, so his GPA ("un"weighted, I guess) is solid but not exceptional, and is somewhat out of balance with his ACT/SAT scores, which are excellent.</p>

<p>A related question I have is that I see references by some colleges to "recalculating GPA for academic courses only." So what does that mean? Does phy ed drop out? (That would make sense to me.) How about music/band (that would make less sense to me). What else? I realize different colleges may have different standards, but any insight would be appreciated.</p>

<p>We are meeting with our son's school counselor this week so I'd like to know more before we have that meeting.</p>

<p>Second issue: This counselor is actually assigned to both our rising senior son and our incoming high school freshman son, and we'll probably spend more time talking about the freshman. He (like my older son) is anything but a "type A" student driven to get As in everything. (I'm actually glad for that.) He's a diligent student in most respects and likes getting good grades, but he's not going to chase them. His approach is generally to do his schoolwork (not to mention his housework) as swiftly as possible, and not sweat the small details. That way he has more time for friends, video games, etc. We're working on that but it's his nature, and honestly it's not the worst approach to life anyway, so long as it's not taken to an extreme. And he's a loving, funny kid, so it's not easy to be real hard on him.</p>

<p>The potential issue we see is that intellectually, he's very precocious. With about an hour's preparation he took the ACT test in June and achieved scores across the board that most high school seniors would love. (Fortunately, big brother bested him slightly in the math sections and therefore the overall score; there was a huge sigh of relief by our older son when the envelopes were opened.) (As an aside, it was an eye-opener when I found this site to learn that there is an entire industry devoted to offering courses that kids take to prepare for these tests. Yikes! I can see why a number of colleges are making them optional.)</p>

<p>Anyway, if anyone has any advice about how to keep a kid like that interested in high school I'd love to hear it, because I'm a little concerned it will become an issue. I should probably mention he would roll his eyes all the way back into his head at the suggestion of taking college or on-line advanced courses and that we have no interest in accelerating him. Bribery, on the other hand, occasionally works for short term motivation, and I am considering establishing some potential rewards (new computer components, e.g.) for certain GPA achievements. The one thing we have learned in the process of our older son's college search is that a better GPA seems to open a lot more doors. I realize there is probably a whole range of philosophical opinions about that approach, but at the risk of creating a firestorm I'd still appreciate any comments.</p>

<p>Thanks</p>

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<p>Welcome to the forum!</p>

<p>There is no one way of computing GPA - even on a 4.0 scale it may be variable if whole grades only or plus/minus are included. </p>

<p>Weighting may take the form of addition (adding, for example, .5 for honors courses or 1.0 for AP), or multiplication (multiplying AP grades by 1.15). There are many varieties.</p>

<p>Colleges have seen them all. Those that consider GPA as an important component may weight or unweight the transcript so that they are using something resembling a standard measure as part of their evaluation. This may also include dropping various courses (which courses depend on the college). </p>

<p>The place where unweighted grades can be a problem is in ranking; if your son has taken many honors and AP courses and done well in them (A's and B's), he will likely be outranked by a student that has taken general courses and aced them all. Colleges say that they take this into account - and I think that they try to. However, if the student is outside the top 10% (as my son was) then you just need to be careful to have a solid foundation of matches that look at the student and not just the rank.</p>

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<p>Many of the schools that say they recalculate the GPA using "academic courses only" consider English, foreign language, science, social sciences & history (so can include psychology, economics, etc), and math as the core courses. Music, band, art, PE, etc. drop out of the GPA as recalculated.</p>

<p>I have seen schools say that they calculate an unweighted GPA, but then consider the difficulty level of the coursework without calculating it into the GPA itself. I don't know how they do that, but that's what they say.</p>

4

<p>Welcome to the forum. You've asked some great questions, the answers to which are often going to be "it depends". Yeah, I know the frustration -- but this is something that can differ a LOT from school to school. To really get the right answer from a particular school, you're going to have to direct the question to the school. Case in point, based on our experience. Same questions were addressed to both: </p>

<ol>
<li>How do you convert 0-100 point scale to a 4.0 scale? </li>
<li>Do you accept a schools weighted GPA? If the school doesn't weight, do you perform your own weighting? How? </li>
</ol>

<p>The answers:</p>

<p>School A: </p>

<p>We do our own weighting. First we convert the grades to letter grades and then convert them to a 4.0 scale we give a 1 point bonus for honors and a 2 point bonus for AP. We only look at science, social science, english, foreign language and math grades. </p>

<p>School B:</p>

<p>We ask the high school guidance counselor to convert the overall GPA to a 4.0 scale. We do not make any conversions on our own. We ask the guidance counselor if the grades are weighted and take that into consideration, but we do no apply our own weighting. We look at the gpa for all the grades, not just the academic core, but we do take rigor of your schedule into account. </p>

<p>So two very different scenarios. </p>

<p>On your second question, I really have no idea -- my son is also bright but school is definitely not his highest priority. The best I've been able to do is use some negative reinforcement (grounding, no car) if I see that he's just phoning it in. Positive reinforcement for A's always seemed a bit too much like bribery to me, but that's just my opinion.</p>

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<p>I'm not into bribery either - read Alfie Kohn's Punished By Rewards before you decide to go this route. Yes, it's a polemic, but it really cites some interesting research on incentives.</p>

<p>As for weighting - in our school unweighted grades appear on the report card and transcript, but a weighting system is used to determine class rank and both the weighted and uweighted GPA appears on the transcript. We're on a 100 point scale. The slow track is 1.0, the regular (Regent's level in NY) is 1.05 and honors and AP courses are 1.1. I'm pretty sure music and art is figured in, but gym and health aren't. Our school doesn't attempt to translate our scale to a 4.0 system - that's up to colleges. Though I suppose they would do it for that "School B" of lderochi's. At any rate the best place to ask about GPAs, ranking and the grading system is to call your school. :-)</p>

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<p>You'll probably find as many weighting systems as there are schools. Our HS, until just recently, was weighting the superior math class [had about 17 studmets out of a class of about 260] with the same weight as the next level down, which had about 50 or so kids enrolled. They finally changed it, with no discussion publicly.......I suspect because they realized that very few other institutions did it that way.</p>

<p>You need to be quite cautious in choosing your application list in the case you note.....grades a bit below what the SAT scores would suggest. If you get carried away with how good the scores are, you are setting up for devastation next April. It is critical for situations where there is a perceived imbalance to use the lower of the two academic indicators,(GPA or scores), and compare yourself to those from your school with similar marks to see where they were accepted. If you do that conscientiously, you'll find at least two or three schools where you have a reasonable chance of admission, and you will have a more realistic assessment of your chances than those whose aplications are informed by having been a valedictorian (with 1370 board scores) or a 1550 SAT scorer [whose actualy rank (often unbeknownst to him) is at the bottom of the second decile].</p>

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<p>I get confused by schools that recalculate a GPA using only academic courses but give no weight to honors or AP. They tell you to take the hardest schedule but then recalculate your GPA and penalize students that do. An example my D has AP English if she gets a B but her friend at college prep(not even honors) English gets an A some colleges will calculate her friends GPA to be higher. This is not at elite schools but LAC's rated 50-100 on US News. I bet schools use the Higher GPA not the schedule strngth.</p>

8

<p>[I get confused by schools that recalculate a GPA using only academic courses but give no weight to honors or AP. They tell you to take the hardest schedule but then recalculate your GPA and penalize students that do.]</p>

<p>Well if the scenario in The Gatekeepers holds true at most admissions office that's not quite what happens. Yes your daughter will have a lower GPA, BUT they will make a note that your child's friend didn't take the hardest courses available at her school and make a note of that. Your daughter will end up in a pile compared to other kids who have also taken challenging courses. The friend will be in a different pile.</p>

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<p>Your younger son sounds like mine...I told him all through school that his grades were going to either keep doors open or close them...that the better his grades in school the more options he would have down the road. He had great SAT scores, his unweighted GPA was 3.55, weighted was 4.05...so he had some C's in AP classes because he didn't really want to bother with the details. Bottom line is that he is going to Northeastern this year with a nice merit scholarship. His grades kept him out of UCLA but in the end he didn't care...
My approach would be to keep repeating the options open mantra and then let him make his own path with the criteria that anything lower than a C will not be accepted at any time. I also curtailed media when a progress report that was not looking good came in....</p>

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<p>Ebeeee -- We occasionally use the withheld media approach too. Amazing how that can get their attention in the digital age. But I don't see a big problem in rewarding good results while also reacting to poor results. Two sides of the same coin, I think. And I do agree with the "options" lecture. You just hope it sinks in, but honestly I don't have a problem if a high school kid isn't obsessing about where he can or will go to college. When you step back from the hysteria, you recognize that there are literally hundreds of fine universities and colleges in this country available to our children. They have educational opportunities of a quality and breadth never before available to the children of any country anywhere. Neither of my sons will ever lose a night's sleep if they can't go to the Ivy League or similar schools, nor will I. But there's nothing wrong with having the opportunity, either, and being able to make the decision when the time comes.</p>

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<p>As far as weighting, it will also depend on how well your school is known by the admissions reps at your target schools. Has your high school sent many kids to the places your son is applying? My kids' school has certain places where lots of kids have gone, thus our weighting where an A in an AP class is 4.3 they will understand.</p>

<p>As far as the 2nd kid who is less driven to the A's, well, there are you will find out lots and lots of kid constellations that match yours:). What to do about it? Depends on the family....</p>

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<p>MilwDad, my point exactly...there is nothing wrong with having the opportunity and having the kid keep his options open...the difficulty I always had, and I think I hear it in your post, was that I felt I wasn't teaching a good "work ethic"...that I wanted the kid to unplug sometimes and put his nose to the grindstone even though he could do something at the last second and pull off that A or A-. It the end, it became like training an animal, reward for good behavior and repeat over and over again hoping some of it would sink in. Mine left for college this am so time will tell...and in the end we parents do the best we can and the rest is up to them.</p>

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<p>I will absolutely say no more video games, no more TV to my son, whether or not his grades are suffering. Although, of course, the grades dip did bring the issue to my attention;). I will absolutely say you have to pay attention to school and do your best to find it interesting. I will absolutely say that I will support any out-of-school activities that are of interest to you that ARE NOT experienced via an LCD. But I stop short of mandating or rewarding an specific performance level. I only set the expectation for the commitment and engagement level as best I can.</p>

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<p>hi Milwdad,</p>

<p>Another welcome to CC and the parents forum. Nothing to add regarding weighted schools (D went to a school that did not weigh grades), but I am going to pay this forward (thanks Xiggi)</p>

<p>NACAC State of College Admission</p>

<p><a href="http://www.nacacnet.org/NR/rdonlyres/4B4C0DF4-BF0A-4B10-89F4-A3D631061305/0/06StateofCollegeAdmissionpdf.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.nacacnet.org/NR/rdonlyres/4B4C0DF4-BF0A-4B10-89F4-A3D631061305/0/06StateofCollegeAdmissionpdf.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>if you don't get a chance to go through the whole report, read Chapter 4:
Factors in the admissions process</p>

<p><a href="http://www.nacacnet.org/NR/rdonlyres/7CA6BEAA-90C5-4357-A498-FB0566564D71/0/06SOCA_Chapter4pdf.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.nacacnet.org/NR/rdonlyres/7CA6BEAA-90C5-4357-A498-FB0566564D71/0/06SOCA_Chapter4pdf.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>
[quote]
Of the 95 percent of schools that calculate grade point averages, 66 percent “weight” student GPAs to account for advanced level coursework, often automatically adding a point or fraction of a point to each grade point average for an advanced course.</p>

<p>Do colleges recalculate GPAs?</p>

<p>Colleges and universities receive transcripts and GPA calculations from thousands of high schools, each of which may calculate GPAs differently.
Many high schools use a traditional 4-point scale to measure grade averages, others use weighted 4.5- or 5-point scales, while still others use grade scales
that reach as high as 8 or 10.</p>

<p>To provide a standard comparison of grade point averages among applicants, some colleges recalculate grade point averages. Colleges are virtually evenly split on the practice of recalculating GPAs—49 percent do and 51 percent
do not. High yield institutions are more likely than low yield institutions to recalculate GPA.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>hope this helps</p>

15

<p>MilWdad,</p>

<p>as i'm sure you know on a 4.0 scale, 4.0=A, 3.0=B, 2.0=C, 1.0=D, 0=F</p>

<p>now the problems in calculating ur gpa and such arrise in 2 areas. Does your school have +/-, neither, or just +. Does your school not even have letters, my high school was solely number based (out of 100).</p>

<p>Schools without -'s and just +'s usually do A=4.0, B+=3.5, B=3.0. etc.
Schools with +/-'s have usually something like A=4.0, A-=3.66/3.7, B+=3.33/3.3, B=3.0, etc.</p>

<p>Weighted GPAs usually add a .3 or .5 for honors and a .5 or 1.0 for APs. Weighted GPAs are only really good for distinguishing people within schools. Student X has gotten all A's in regular class, Student B has gotten all As and A-s in all honors classes. Student B has a higher GPA due to weighting - he took "more challenging" classes. Elite colleges are more likely to recalculate GPAs because students they are considering generally students who have all taken the strongest courses - they don't need to be separated from the rest of the applicant pool.</p>

<p>The only problem I forsee your son because his school apparantly doesn't weight - which could mean it would be more difficult for him to be in the top nth %tile. However, I believe that students in the more difficult classes generally do better than students in the regular classes simply because they are smarter/more driven.</p>

<p>In short, don't worry about it.</p>

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<p>I just wanted to make a point to Alumother. If at any point I have felt my kids' studies were truly suffering because they were playing video/computer games, I have cut them off, at least on school days, for the duration of the term. But our kids are living in a different age and almost a different reality. I was getting irritated at my 14 year old this summer because he was on his computer so much. Finally I asked him what he was doing. I assumed he was just playing some video game he had bought. But as it turns out, he was engaged in a collaborative project to DEVELOP a net based video game. Some were doing design, he was doing programming. They communicated by means of message boards (like this one) that my son had helped set up and moderate. These weren't local friends, but people around the country (or the world, I suppose). </p>

<p>Whoa!</p>

<p>Back in our day we were playing Go Fish and Yahtzee, and letting our brains turn to applesauce by watching idiotic sitcoms with laugh tracks. He barely watches TV at all. Between what I was doing at 14 and what he's doing, I don't have much doubt which is better preparation for that flat world out there. So with some newfound respect, I give him a little more rope. </p>

<p>When school starts I'll make sure he scales back, but he isn't just "playing", it appears.</p>

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<p>Hey, if my son were designing and programming a videogame, that would be a different story. I would have great respect for that activity.</p>

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<p>MilwDad. Sounds like my son. It turns out that one of the mods he's been working on will actually be an extra on the next release of the game! Many families would say we've allowed our son way too much computer time - but I see it more from the unschooling philosophy - if you leave a kid alone they can accomplish great things.</p>

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<p>Our son's high school does not weight grades. We were told this policy had been debated numerous times but never changed. So my son's GPA and class rank with the most rigorous academic schedule possible (many advanced and AP courses) are measured in the same pool as the kids who have chosen (or been advised) never to take a single accelerated course. It's not as though we would have tried to game the system by having him forego advanced courses even if we had known the negative effect the advanced track might have on his GPA/college applications, but it's still frustrating. I guess we'll see to what degree the colleges we are looking at really will look at the curriculum rather than the raw numbers.</p>

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<p>I wonder if it would be possible in these cases for an GC to say something like "We don't weight grades at our school, but if we did ___ would probably be in the top ___%".</p>