Our school GPA is very strict and strange. Some students may get B in honor class but get A in national AP test even just take the honor class and self-study.
Students feel more pressure from school GPA, not AP tests.
Not strange at all. There are a lot of factors that go into grading over the course of a semester, including homework and perhaps even attendance.
The fact that someone earns a B in a class but then aces the AP test is not surprising. (Btw: the AP test does not score by A, B, C; it gives a 1-5, with 5 being high).
It is true. The teacher didn’t accept late HWs. He never used schooloop to assign HWs and remind students clearly. There is no chance to catch up if you miss two times. Boys is easy to make mistakes.
It seems that if a student is taking a high level course and planning to take the AP test for that class, he/she should not really need reminders about homework.
Yes, it is pretty common to have a teacher who is a strict grader and does not give many As in a class, but where the students are well prepared for the AP exam.
In college, you will be more on your own with homework and other assignments with less reminders and hand holding.
That’s what notebooks are for! Every teacher is different, and part of HS is learning how to navigate the individual “rules”.
My pet peeve was group projects where you could be a typical A student, but then get dragged down by kids who were just cruising for a low B (unless you did the vast majority of the work). Yeah, not “fair”, but that is life…
But colleges can have a strict curve. My D’s bio lab instructor told the lab on the first day, that she was only able to award 10% A’s. Period. But not all 10% in this specific lab would necessarily receive an A since all of the labs would be averaged. Second semester, my D’s lab had 1 A for 20+ students. Another lab had 3, so a third had zero. Tough, but welcome to life.
You are the parent, right? Isn’t that a good thing for a school you have picked for rigour and acceleration?
It isn’t that good to pick a rigor school as I thought. Student gets too much punishment. A student can have many AP classes in a so-so school since GPA is not a problem. But a student in a rigor school may not since it is to hard to take many advanced classes and keep a good gpa. Don’t know how AOs evaluate GPAs from different schools.
Maybe he has too much on his plate, how many did you have him take? how many APs has he done before this year? Which subjects is he doing?
He had self-studied 3 science aps w/o any issue in 9th and got AP test score 4.75 on average. But now he has difficulty on another school honor science.(he has one AP in school very busy this yr) He lost many points on two late HWs and tests(e.g. Need to follow teacher’s instruction and use unit in every step)
@wzg69g, this doesn’t sound unusual at all. You can’t compare self study for a single exam with year-long teacher led classes. Of course assignments must be turned in on time and exam instructions must be followed, why would you expect any different? AP teachers often try to emulate a university setting, and they leave it up to the students to set up their own reminders for assignment due dates because they are trying to prepare the students for college. This sounds like a completely normal class experience for an AP course. If your son wants an A he needs to get himself organized so that he turns in his assignments on time, and he needs to be sure to read and follow all instructions on the exams.
He is well organized in most cases. I can understand he missed 1-2 times in one semister since he has tons of HWs. I cannot understand that theacher didn’t accept HWs even 10mins late.He needs to improve but as a parent, I don’t want to push him too much since I saw he did very well. I want to say a rigor school is not that good as I thought. In the future, I think a private university may be better choice for my kid than a public university like UC berkeley. Public schools normally do not care and punish students too much. I saw private high schools are very nice to students and more easy and reasonable to get A.
Welcome to the cold cruel world. Your child will get to college and find out that if he has to turn in an assignment, if it is one minute late, the system will shut you out, your work will not be accepted and there will be no recourse to making up late work.
Most of us who work jobs with deadlines find that if we don’t meet deadlines there will be consequences (miss too many deadlines and you won’t have to worry about that job any more).
Time management is essential for students on their way to college. One of the biggest challenges in students transitioning from high school to college is their ability to manage their time. If your child knows that the teacher does not accept late work and will get dinged because of it, you would think the first time this happened would be enough from preventing your son from doing it again.
Don’t look at it as someone punishing your child, but help your child to develop good life long habits. Someone being nice and making it easy for them, does not always help them in a situation where they will not be coddled (college, grad school, professional school and the world of work)
Thank you help me thinking it positively. But I prefer a private university for my son since I want unversity educate him, not just as a manufacturing product without care.
Our high school is similar. My kids have gotten 5s on the AP test but Bs in the actual class, and not because they missed class or didn’t turn in homework. The teachers at our HS have very high expectations in honors and AP classes and they grade accordingly. On the plus side, my daughter was very well prepared for college and did not find it to be difficult.
FWIW, my daughter attends a public university. She has been educated, has received individual attention and has had professors and administrators who care. Private universities haven’t cornered the market on that.
^^be careful what you wish for. (Hint: there are a LOT of private colleges that don’t care much about undergrads either – many of them are top research Unis. By definition, research and grad programs is their focus.)
It is a good and valuable leason to kid, but it is a punishment since AO may look down on him for GPA
@wzg69g, if many other students in his class do turn in assignments on time and properly follow all instructions on assignments and exams, leading them to have higher GPAs than your son, the admissions officers will be 100 percent justified in looking down on your son’s lower GPA. You obviously want sympathy and assurance that the teacher is being unfair to your son, but everything you’re describing sounds like a normal AP class which has higher expectations for students’ maturity and time management skills.
HS kids, sigh. Gifted son got A’s senior year in AP calculus, B’s in AP statistics because one counted homework (zeroes on homework plus 100%s on tests yielded a first quarter B). The B’s he got in AP US history the year before were deserved- his teacher was spot on about his essays (eg he needed to focus on less scope so he could finish his thoughts) and he could have improved but got the 4 on the AP exam. Final semester senior year the chemistry AP exam was in the beginning of May and school ended in June- he got a C in AP chemistry and a 5 on the AP exam (he told me he didn’t like the teaching although he liked the teacher as a person). By then it didn’t matter for college admissions. In his case he needed to go to college (was 16) to have classes worth his effort.
It can happen that a student does not need to study or do the work for a HS class because s/he already knows the material. However, good study skills are needed for college- top schools will cover a lot more than the AP versions. Junior year (and before) courses will have AP scores available in time for college applications. There is a reason schools look at unweighted gpas, test scores, essays and recommendations and not use just one.
btw, I believe there is a good reason to not do class rankings. The kid who takes a full load of the most rigorous classes available and gets one lesser grade falls below an okay student who takes study halls and easier classes.
@wis75, my S’s school ranks on weighted GPA. Level A is 4.0, honors or pre-AP A is 5.0, AP or dual credit A is 6.0. There is no chance that a kid taking easy classes and study halls will outrank a kid taking a bunch of AP classes. My S is a junior taking six APs, along with maybe a hundred other kids. Ranking on unweighted GPA could result in the situation you describe but it seems pretty common that schools weight the more rigorous classes for ranking purposes.