A strange problem - need to drop a course for higher W'GPA

Parents Forum
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<p>Here’s what I would do, because I doubt there’s anything you can do about it. Like CGM says, the school would have hell to pay if people found out that your son got a boost in his rank because he took a class off his transcript, regardless of which school the class came from. </p>

<p>You’re going to go insane if you start worrying about other people’s grades. How would you ever find out if someone had B’s but still ended up with a higher GPA than your son? Who is going to share all that information? I doubt anyone. Therefore you’re going to spend a lot of time what-iffing and getting upset about situations that are not only beyond your control, but that may not even be the case- a good recipe for a bitter life. </p>

<p>You’ll also go crazy recalculating GPAs based on “what if this weren’t there?” My son was only a couple hundredths of a point away from being at the top; I could go through all kinds of arithmetic gymnastics figuring, what if he hadn’t taken band; what if he hadn’t taken up a second foreign language; what if… Yikes, I’d go crazy! You don’t want to spend the next, what? Two years doing that.</p>

<p>So what I would do is look out for #1. Your son must have transferred to this school because it was a better fit for him, so take the opportunity and make the best of it. Sure, go ahead and ask the school if they can drop the class- no harm in that. If you don’t ask, you never know. But I wouldn’t push it because you will come across as a mom who is sniffing around in other student’s academic records, which is not someone you want the administration at your school to think of you as.</p>

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<p>Mathson lost points because of scheduling conflicts that prevented him from taking an honors physics class as a freshman. Also Latin only had honors fourth year while other languages started in 3rd year. I don’t think we would have made other choices, but no one told us when he chose Latin in 7th grade that it would cause endless scheduling problems AND give him one less honors course.</p>

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<p>just out of couriousity, how much difference in GPA are we talking about here? and guess it worries me that the parent would be willing to do something unethical to boost a GPA</p>

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<p>We homeschool now, and when I went to high school, my graduating class had about 14 kids, so this was never an issue. I have read a lot of posts on this, however, and I can’t believe how ridiculous it all sounds. Students end up being penalized for wanting to learn, and the ones who come out on top are the ones who DO actually game the system. It seems like a kid would need to plan out their entire high school career in advance to maximize points for GPA calculations, and avoid ANYTHING that might lower it by a few precious decimal points. I never took a weighted course, and I’m not sure I really believe in them. Yes, it seems fair to give kids extra credit for taking honors or AP classes, but is there really any guarantee that they are always harder than the regular classes? From the posts here, it seems like there are quite a few great teachers teaching regular classes and awful teachers teaching advanced classes. I think I favor systems where schools either do not rank that precisely or calculate rank only on a certain number of core subjects. I’m even OK with the concept on multiple valedictorians, as I see no difference between the records of kids whose GPAs vary by less than 0.05. Ultimately, though, you are stuck with the policies of the school you attend. </p>

<p>I don’t think the OP is trying to do anything unethical. To me it sounds like even though her son has taken MANY honors classes, his new school will only count a limited number of them as honors classes when they calculate his GPA. As a result, he has a lot of grades that he’s being given 4 points instead of 5 points for, even though he earned the grades in honors classes. His mother noted that he ended up taking the same class twice, and it is being counted towards his GPA twice. I can see her logic in wondering if she could ask that it only be counted once, but she probably is stuck. The school’s policies are working against her son, and I do not see much she can do about it.</p>

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<p>we are talking about one class that the student took- a non honors class that the parent wants to dump to boost the gpa</p>

<p>and if schools just started dumping clases to boost their students GPA, imagine the fallout</p>

<p>no system is perfect, but if we make it worse by letting people drop grades because life happened - moving, family issues, changing schools, omgoddness, then nothing good be trusted to mean anything</p>

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<p>it wasn’t that he took the same course twice, t was that he took a course he thought he needed and he didn’t “need” it</p>

<p>oh well</p>

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<p>Listen parents carefully please!!
Do not forget that the public school counselor DID NOT give us the transferred credits in the first six months after the transfer happened. we didnt get the “Unofficial transcript” for the entire year of soph year. If we had known that he would get the credits transferred for all the courses (even with lower credits), my son wouldnt have taken the extra course. Not only that, the counselor approved all the courses to begin with knowing the situation. My son gave up his lunch to take the extra course in soph year and got an “A”. Not to forget, he took all honors classes (6 credits each course in voc school, 1.5 hrs class hour) in his VOC school. He lost some credits in the process of transfer but we were ready for that part. That was part of the transfer. But taking an extra course based on a mis-managed/mis-guided process and getting a lower GPA that he deservs actually is not what we expected.</p>

<p>Also wanted to mention that the course we are trying to drop, is an “A” grade course. I dont know yet if it could be done at all. But Believe me we are not trying to do anything unethical here!!</p>

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<p>how could it be ethical to drop a grade from a transcript for a course taken, no matter what weird reason it was taken- to bump up a gpa? I could come up with lots of reasons for my D to drop a class grade to boost a gpa, and so could many many others, but your son took the class already</p>

<p>if the class was weighted, but not needed, would you drop it? no, so the not needed part doesn’t fly, so you are thinking that because he got an A, that the schools will say, well, it was an A, so lets drop it from the transrcipt?</p>

<p>how much point difference are we talking about here anyway</p>

<p>a full point on the gpa? deserves? he took the class, that was his grade and life happens </p>

<p>what difference is this going to really make? ego? pride? scholarships? and come on, please, how much of a difference in his gpa are we talking about</p>

<p>please tell us</p>

<p>something else to consider, many colleges recalcualte the gpa- some drop clases themselves, some drop the being weighted, some take it as it comes, etc</p>

<p>so all this fuss could be for nothing, but pride and ego, I can’t tell, because you won’t say how much point difference we are talking about and what the consequences are at the school</p>

<p>if you think a 4.75 is so much worse than a 4.90, please</p>

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<p>I don’t think it’s wrong to ask and I don’t think it’s unethical to ask. All they can do is say no. I just would think hard about pushing it further- going over the counselor’s head. </p>

<p>And I would never comment at all about someone else’s grades to a counselor or administrator at the school, even if you know of a situation like that. The idea of a mom sniffing out other student’s grades is not endearing to the GC. I can assure you, she will not get the GC to drop classes off her son’s transcript if the GC thinks she is doing this. Bad idea. Hey, I’m trying to help.</p>

<p>Advice- the GC can be your son’s best friend when your son applies to college. You want the GC to say/think, “this kid is a genuine inquisitive learner”, not “this kid’s mom almost got me fired when she found out her kid’s classmate got a B in AP French, but still had a higher GPA.”</p>

<p>I can understand your frustration. Believe me, I understand more than most that GPA rankings can be very misleading. But in the long run, you’ll be better off being friends with the administration of your new school.</p>

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<p>I don’t think the difference in the GPA matters - she’s already said he got an A in the class. The silly part of the situation is that he’d have been better off not taking the class, even though he did as well as possible in the class. A system that penalizes kids for doing more is a messed up system, in my opinion.</p>

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<p>agree w/doublepl. worth trying!
like it or not, we lost bunch of credits (as a result lost GPA points too) when xferred into this school.
but what can you do? It’s the process we have to follow.</p>

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<p>

I agree it’s not wrong … I agree it’s not unethical … I agree it can raise his GPA by some minute amount. </p>

<p>And I also think if college admissions folks somehow found out … many would not care … no one would think it was a good thing … and many would look negatively on the move (because I have to admit to me however it is explained it reads like trying to find a loophole to negate a legitimate grade to raise the GPA)</p>

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<p>3togo- I meant I would think hard about pushing it further, as in…don’t do it.</p>

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<p>robinhood, I agree there’s nothing wrong or unethical in your asking. But if the answer is “no”, then as doubleplay rightly suggests, don’t let it drive you nuts. High school is a bureaucratic mess. And high school is not for amateurs. In the grand scheme of things chances are minimal that one single A that counted as a 4 instead of a 5 would affect admissions. And remember - some colleges de-weight the grades and re-calculate on an unweighted basis anyway.</p>

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<p>what exactly would be the reason for dropping the class, how would the GC at either school explain this to anyone- I understand why the OP wants to drop it, but what would the reason on paper be that needs to be approved by someone</p>

<p>well, the kid took a class he thought he needed, but didn’t and though he got an A, it drops his gpa enough to…um…well…so we took out the class</p>

<p>oh yes, the person that took the art class and got a D, well, we can drop it from them as well</p>

<p>stil want to know what the difference in the gpa would be</p>

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<p>A waste of time to worry about past grades/courses- colleges will see both transcripts and recalculate the gpa so they can reasonably compare the record to the hundreds of others. One class will not make or break things, so don’t obsess over it. Everyone has quirks in their record, relax and enjoy the positives of choices made. If things don’t work as you hope for your son it will be because of multiple factors, not because a course remained on his transcript. No one will hold extras against him, in fact taking an easy class to fill a schedule looks better than having a study hall. All of us can recite “what if…” but it doesn’t help. Let him enjoy his school- and DON’T LOOK BACK.</p>

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<p>Robinhood–Your situation is frustrating, and it is frustrating that we live in a world where .005 of a point can make so much difference in class rank,etc. Since no one really knows what factor it is that puts your child “in” at any given school, you want the best wherever you can have it. Anyway, we had a similar situation with my youngest who went into high school with credits in Algebra I, Physical Science and Spanish. Because Algebra I and Physical Science were weighted in high school and they only put in an A(unweighted) for the prior credit, her overall average and thus rank was lower than her peers who had straight As. It turned out that at the school board level there is a policy that credits from prior schools can be put in as pass-fail or with a grade. The counselor changed it to pass-fail in accordance with the policy and since those pass-fail classes are used for credit, but not grade point, her average went up. Is that an option in your situation rather than having the course totally removed?</p>

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<p>Thanks for all encouraging support.
CSS, good idea. I am not aware of this kind of policies (pass/fail) in my school disctrict. That wud be perfect since this school didn’t transfer the courses with original credits anyway. I just started thinking on this issue. I need to do more homework on this.</p>

<p>Agree w/doubleplay approach.
agree w/Hayden very much - “High school is a bureaucratic mess. And high school is not for amateurs.” I learned these things in a hard way</p>

<p>As you guys said it, every little bit of GPA boost helps!! specially for fin aid apps. I know that from my own experience.</p>

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<p>what is the difference in the GPA, you must know…are we talkng .1, .5, 1.0 difference</p>

<p>and what effect will it really have</p>

<p>if this is so important, you shuold have those answers</p>

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<p>

I’m a little surprised, too. My school system counts all high school credit courses (including those taken in 6th grade) towards the GPA.</p>

<p>Amazing how different school systems are across the country. Another issue regards withdrawal from courses. If a student drops a course (after the normal drop period of ~2 weeks), does that W for Withdrawn count as an E or F in the GPA? It does here. (I just found out that there is an exception for AP courses; if a student drops an AP course anytime before the beginning of the second semester, they will not be penalized and the course will not show up on their transcript. A student is also allowed to drop down to the regular version of the course at any time before the second semester; of course for some AP courses there is no regular course in the same subject.) If a student retakes a course that they failed the first time, BOTH grades count in the GPA. There is no grade forgiveness. </p>

<p>Do some schools not count Withdrawn grades in the GPA? And do some schools have grade forgiveness, where the lower course grade is dropped?</p>