<p>We homeschool our kids, and I am trying to figure out how to appropriately weight S2's transcript. We've been discussing this on a homeschool list I'm on, and it seems like people are all over the board on how it should be done.</p>
<p>I recognize that every state and even every school district probably does this differently, but I hoped I could find some kind of a trend here. S2 will be applying to USC, Florida State, UT-Austin, and Chapman Univ. I am posting this here rather than in the homeschooling forum, because I am trying to find out how "regular" schools do the weighting.</p>
<p>Okay, so the regular grading scale is A=4, B=3, etc.</p>
<p>1) How do you weight honors courses?</p>
<p>2) How do you weight AP courses, and is there any weight given to "pre-AP" courses?</p>
<p>3) How do you weight dual-credit courses at a community college?</p>
<p>Timely,
I think you'll find that even regular schools have multiple ways of weighting. At my kids school, honors, AP, Pre AP, Comm. college dual credit are all given the same weight: A=5, B=3.75, C=2.5. However, there's usually not a choice between AP and honors-it's usually AP or regular class or honors vs regular class. I know of many schools where AP weight is greater than honors weight. When weighting grades many schools also give A=5, B=4, etc.</p>
<p>Our school adds 0.5 for Honors courses, +1 for AP, and University courses are treated as AP as long as they are in academic subjects (not simply fulfilling a PE credit etc). Our school recently implemented a Dual-enrollment policy which places CC credits on the HS transcript (previously they did not). We don't have Pre-AP courses, but I would think they might be considered Honors? So we use A=5(AP or DE) A=4.5(H)</p>
<p>That said, most colleges have their own system of establishing HS course weight and will in fact look at UW grades in relation to course rigor based on the profile. I would think that simply designating a course as Honors or AP with a description of the coursework would be all that is required. An official CC or Univ. transcript should be forwarded from that college, with perhaps a notation on the homeschool transcript that they have been included (or not, depending on your preference)</p>
<p>Good luck timely - my hat is off to you dedicated homeschoolers and I'm afraid the different answers here will only confuse the situation more because there are literally dozens of variations on the weighting issue!</p>
<p>If you're homeschooling, why do you need to weight grades at all?</p>
<p>While I am not an expert in this, I thought the reason schools weight is so that students are ranked appropriately given the rigor of their courseload -- so that a student who takes "easy" classes and gets straight As isn't ranked higher than a student who earns some Bs in AP classes. </p>
<p>As a homeschooler, there is no ranking involved, so no need to weight.</p>
<p>Since every high school develops its own weighting policy, I don't think you'll find an agreed-upon method.</p>
<p>Just show his grades, and whether the class was honors, AP, whatever. The college will calculate the GPA its own way.</p>
<p>Definitely have child take the AP exams if you call a course AP, otherwise there is no way of knowing you covered the AP material. Also, the Honors designation would not apply, it serves to show the course was a higher level than regular, not applicable since one HS's honors could be another's regular. Some colleges ignore grade weighting in determining gpa's, ignore freshman grades, nonacademic courses, etc. Don't bother trying to come up with a gpa for colleges, use it to show your child what he might have had at a regular school. Never heard of any special "pre-AP" designation, just sounds like an ordinary course- all courses should prepare one for college/AP courses. The college grades are your proof child can do the work- outside grading stand on its own merit .</p>
<p>I'm not going to weight grades on my son's homeschooling transcript. Indeed, for the most part I'll simply report external grades of distance learning and classroom-based courses, and report test scores on various tests, and otherwise call the grades from homeschooling work a "pass." Grades are arbitrary, at best, and I don't want to maintain the impression that I think grades are anything other than fictional.</p>
<p>I think weighting grades for a homeschooler is silly. If I'd been homeschooling I wouldn't have had grades, I'd have provided some sort of narrative of what was covered each year. I would have reported grades that were given by any outside courses that were taken. </p>
<p>But for the record, our high school transcript records only unweighted grades. The weighted grades are used only for a weighted GPA that determines class ranking. We have a 1-100 scale. The slow version of classes are weighted 1.0. The normal speed classes (Regent's level = college prep) are weighted 1.05. The honors classes are weighted 1.10 and so are APs. I think the AP classes should be weighted higher, but they aren't.</p>
<p>I did weight grades in my homeschooler's transcript. First of all, the large colleges do not recalculate gpas but use those presented in high school transcript (I know a number of public-schooled kids who were complaining that their unweighted gpa was compared to weighted gpas of kids from other schools). Secondly, DS who got the home-made transcript did go to public school in 9-10 grades, so it would be impossible to make a "we do not use grades" transcript for him. And anyway, I don't see why his AP EPGY and community college classes should go ungraded (and unweighted), when the kids from public schools would send those same grades to the universities.</p>
<p>Both high schools attended by my children were adding 1 point for both honors and AP classes, so that was exactly how I dealt with the AP and college-level classes taken by DS. Some of the self-study classes went to the transcript as pass/fail; and others (for which I was able to obtain an objective measure such as SAT II score or final grade for online study) were graded but not weighted. </p>
<p>It's completely up to the parent how the grades should be handled; as long as the explanation of the grading policy is attached, the universities will be able to figure out how to compare the homeschooler's grades to those of other applicants. Same as any between-school comparison, actually.</p>
<p>Oh, and BTW, they don't rank kids in our current district; but they still do weight the grades.</p>
<p>
[quote]
If you're homeschooling, why do you need to weight grades at all?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>One reason is that my kid will be competing for outside scholarships with kids who have a GPA. College admissions offices are probably accustomed to dealing with special circumstances where kids don't have GPA's. But when my kid applies for a scholarship from the National Guard Association of Texas, they aren't going to know what to do with a kid with no GPA. They will likely just put his application aside.</p>
<p>The vast majority of students will be submitting weighted GPA's along with the unweighted. Even though each school weights differently, it will be clear to the scholarship committees that one kid was awarded extra weight on his transcript and another was not.</p>
<p>The mediocre public school that my kids finished before college never weighted anything. Naturally, I wondered if they could be compared with kids whose school transcripts were weighted, in the eyes of college admissions officers.</p>
<p>So, I asked several at the tour meeting and kept hearing, "The first thing we notice on the transcript is whether or not it is a "weighted" or "unweighted" GPA, and then we recalculate in the student's AP's, even if the h.s. didn't." I heard this often enough that I was satisfied and stopped asking everywhere. </p>
<p>I thought the reason that some high schools weight the GPA is to provide equal competition among many students for the top class rank. Wouldn't it sound like a more honest presentation from a homeschooled applicant, competing with nobody but himself, to present unweighted GPA, labelled prominently "Unweighted."</p>
<p>I read that there's one AdCom at Harvard who handles all the homeschool apps. Perhaps that's a place to ask and get some counsel.</p>
<p>I don't have a dog in this fight, however. My 3 are all on their way. So it's just idle discussion for me now. </p>
<p>Best wishes to all the dedicated homeschoolers and their kids!</p>
<p>So, if the student is 100% sure that ALL colleges he is going to apply wil recalculate gpa, he will be all set with the unweighted gpa. If he is not completely sure, it's much better to provide both weighted and unweighted gpa to the universities (especially if he is applying to large publics with 40,000 applicants and computer-based decision process)</p>
<p>I think marmat103's point is well taken that one must investigate the rules of the places (colleges, scholarship programs) where the young person is applying. But that said, I thus far haven't discovered a reason to do otherwise than say "[tokenadultfamily] Homeschool does not weight grades."</p>
<p>Timely, I understand your desire to allow your son to compete for outside scholarships -- but if you are talking about grades that you assigned for coursework.. honestly, have you ever given your kid a B? a C? </p>
<p>There is an inherent conflict of interest when a transcript is used to apply for a scholarship and the person who has assigned the grades and prepared the transcript is the same who person who will be paying for college -- it is to your direct financial benefit for your son to be awarded scholarship money. </p>
<p>I personally would be uncomfortable with the idea of scholarship dollars being awarded in that situation. I don't have a problem with Tokenadult's approach of reporting outside grades (distance learning, etc.) and a "Pass" on everything else -- but I certainly wouldn't be happy as the parent of kids who had to compete with 30-40 other kids in every single class for grades if they lost out on scholarships to some kid whose mom or dad gave them straight A's. </p>
<p>Think about it -- as a homeschooler you are going to tailor the coursework to your kid's needs, interests and learning style. You probably never penalized your kid for failing to do homework because he was sick - nor did you reduce a grade because he was "absent" from class while accompanying you on a family vacation. </p>
<p>Most kids in public or private schools don't have the advantage of a school schedule that is tailored to their individual needs -- those with high grades not only have worked hard, but they've also dealt with an environment that makes it harder to please the people doing the grading -- not to mention the fact that they have had to please several dozen different people, with differing policies and expectations, along the way. I could easily give you a long list of anecdotes about problems with high school teachers and capricious grading policies, as could any other parent of a kid in a regular school. The point is simply that no matter how bright and diligent the student, a homeschooling transcript is not the equivalent of 4 years of grades by different teachers teaching different classes, any more than the allowance I gave my kids could be equated to their earnings from outside employment. </p>
<p>Please don't interpret this as an attack on homeschooling -- it isn't -- but the difference arises because of some of the same reasons that you probably chose to homeschool. You very likely have given your kid a great advantage by the homeschooling environment you provided -- but I don't think fashioning a "transcript" to compete with kids who don't have that advantage is fair to them. If the lack of a transcript effectively disqualifies your kid from some scholarships, then I think that is something that simply goes along with the choices you made -- I am sure there are other scholarships he can apply for that don't require a formal transcript and would look instead to his outside accomplishments.</p>
<p>The considerations that calmom mentions in post #14 are a major reason why many academically avid homeschoolers from families with limited means take LOTS of standardized tests of various kinds, the better to demonstrate that grades from mom are not the only evidence that the child has learned something. That's pretty standard advice for homeschoolers applying to highly selective programs (colleges or scholarships), advice I heard repeated the week before last by an experienced college counselor. For example, taking more than the bare minimum of required SAT Subject Tests is a very good idea for a homeschooled college applicant.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Timely, I understand your desire to allow your son to compete for outside scholarships -- but if you are talking about grades that you assigned for coursework.. honestly, have you ever given your kid a B? a C?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I gave him a D last semester in a 1/2 credit course (which he is going to be none to happy about when he gets home from a conference tomorrow and finds out). Why? He didn't finish the assigned work. Too bad, so sad; I warned him and warned him. Let me tell you when you <em>are</em> the teacher who assigns the bad grade and then you have to live with the student, it can be less than pleasant. :-P </p>
<p>For the record, I have given him 8 A's and 2 B's, while in outside classes he's earned 8 A's and 6 B's (4 of those were math....<em>not</em> his best subject). Also, some of those grades are 1/2 credit courses and some are 1 credit. His unweighted GPA is 3.63.</p>
<p>I understand that you cannot generalize about everyone in any given group, but I do know a lot of homeschoolers. I'm on a few homeschool email lists where we have lately been discussing this, too. Over and over again, the concern among homeschoolers is integrity. We know that if confidence in our "mommy transcripts" breaks down, it will hurt us all.</p>
<p>I agree with Tokenadult that the standardized tests are crucial for backing up our transcripts, and S will be doing 3 SAT subject tests and 2 AP tests in addition to his SAT. Additionally, he has dual-credit cc courses. I think those grades are pretty consistent with the grades I have assigned him. He'll have about 42 hours dual-credit by the time he graduates, so he'll have his share of capricious graders, etc. by the time it's all done.</p>
<p>I'm not really fashioning the transcript, in the sense of changing any grades. I'm just trying to figure out how to prepare a transcript that will accurately reflect S's academic performance in comparison to other students.</p>
<p>Question for everyone. I'm confused about community colleges- where do they fit in, eg in Wisconsin we have the flagship, the other 4 year UW's, a few 2 year campuses and the area technical college system which can get one transferable credits. Are the CC's 2 year regular college or technical or both? I presume it matters state by state. CC credits don't sound like they would be as impressive as regular 4 year colleges/universities.</p>
<p>Yes, wis75, Wisconsin's unified system of government-operated higher education is quite a bit different from that in most other states. Here in Minnesota, where we have a half-unified system (these days all state-operated higher education other than the University of Minnesota is part of one governmental body), the term "community college" typically refers to two-year colleges that offer either </p>
<p>a) terminal associate degrees leading to certain kinds of jobs, </p>
<p>or </p>
<p>b) lower-division undergraduate programs that transfer to the state university or other four-year colleges. </p>
<p>My best friend from childhood did the first two years of an electrical engineering major at a community college, and all of the credits transfered flawlessly to the U of MN Institute of Technology, where he was eventually all-but-dissertation for a Ph.D. in his subject. He has since had a great career as an engineer.</p>
<p>The biggest problem I see with CC's is the level of one's peer group, ie not the prof or course material necessarily, but the academic caliber of one's fellow students compared to the best 4 year schools. I wonder how frustrating it is for gifted students to take courses with average college students...</p>
<p>Given that the "average" college students are several years older than the "gifted" high schoolers at the CC's, I doubt that it is a frustrating as you think, except perhaps in courses that might be deemed "remedial" (such as a basic algebra or English writing course).</p>