IMO, rigor is preferable over CP. ASU doesn’t weight that challenge. They weigh AP’s and CP’s the same. They aren’t the same, and that’s a fact. My husband attended ASU.
Definitely no weight given. I was surprised by it. Every college my D1 applied to gives weight.
Both will be accepted at ASU and UoA - it’s not that one will be “accepted over” the other.
Also, not every college agrees with you. Most are quite vague on this and just say they want to see both. But CU Boulder, as an example of another public flagship (which unlike ASU does not auto admit and says it wants to see rigor), says:
Please note: a challenging schedule will not outweigh a non-competitive GPA, as your grades ultimately remain the single most important factor in your admission decision
Of course, like ASU it has a very high admit rate so chances are that again both students in your hypothetical example would be admitted for most courses.
I’m not sure the issue here. ASU has qualifiers out for all to see and a merit calculator.
If it’s not for you, why apply,
Many schools are like this.
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Applied to ASU. They didn’t make a mistake. I did reach out to verify. Rigor isn’t as important to ASU as an A in a CP class.
I obviously didn’t think it was unworthy. All schools calculate to a core UW GPA, but many recognize rigor and add weight to the classes. For everyone who is unaware (like I was), ASU and UoA does not add weight for honors or AP. For anyone trying to apply to a school such as nursing, you need to recalculate based on your core and that’s it. Want to make sure students and parents are aware.
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But there’s hundreds of schools like this. So they need to be aware for all.
That’s a part of understanding the weighting system where you apply. UF is different than UGA than ASU, etc.
The same student has different GPAs. UC too - doesn’t count 9th grade.
Earlier it was made to seem this was unfair. It’s not. Their school, their choice.
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Totally get it. It would actually be beneficial to know this before students choose their courses in high school. If GPA is the most important factor, then take CP classes and graduate with a 4.0. Smarter kids with very high GPAs/mostly As with a rigorous schedule will likely attend a more reputable college.
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Define more reputable as both U of A and ASU are academic powerhouses in so many areas from engineering to operations/supply chain to physics/astronomy to journalism to social sciences and more. Not to mention both have strong honors Colleges.
There’s many a kid at both who got into much stronger, including Ivy.
Well obviously how much rigor they should have partly depends which college they want to apply to - we know top colleges want to see highest rigor as well as good grades - but the information is generally out there for colleges like this, so why wouldn’t they know before they choose their courses? You say above you were unaware, but it seemed pretty clear to me from their website - did you assume rather than check?
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Perhaps this student was denied to the nursing program? There is a higher gpa requirement which could eliminate many B students with rigor over A students without it.
“The admission standards for majors in the Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation are higher than minimum university standards. Effective fall 2022, first-year admission requirements are:
- top 10% of high school graduating class, OR
- an overall high school cumulative GPA of 3.80 in ASU competency courses (scale is 4.00 = “A”), OR
- an overall high school cumulative GPA of 3.50 in ASU competency courses AND either a 25 ACT or 1230 SAT combined evidence-based reading and writing plus math score“
When the student is interested in a very specific competitive program, it is important to understand the requirements for admission at various schools. The colleges get to choose how they admit students, and the student is able to choose where to apply that is the best fit for them.
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A B+ in all courses as per a prior post should make the requirement on one of the alternatives assuming the student had the requisite test scores (which don’t look particularly taxing for someone who is focused on a rigorous curriculum?)
(to restate it, if a 3.5 gpa is not reached with those test scores then a lot of other “more rigorous” colleges may be out of reach as well.)
Of course if they haven’t done standardized testing then it becomes pretty difficult as the gpa bar becomes quite high. Edit: although the first post says the student got a 3.8 unweighted gpa.
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It’s not obvious. I wouldn’t assume anything in this process and it’s actually not obvious. Many colleges recalculate GPAs, then add weight, but not they’re not explicitly transparent about it. For instance, we went to one large university that doesn’t recalculate GPA’s at all. Whatever your GPA is whether it is weighted or unweighted, it is what it is. My D25 was accepted there and received merit from the school too, but their process seems odd to me as well. Not to mention that we wouldn’t have known that if we didn’t tour the school. Separately, we toured another school that recalculates, then adds weight. Again, they don’t tell you that on their website. My post is meant to make parents aware. Equating a rigorous B+ in an AP class is NOT the same as a B+ in CP and ASU calculates them the same.
I’m from the northeast, so speaking broadly, ASU isn’t what we would consider “reputable.”
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By obvious, I mean it is clearly stated by ASU on their admission pages what their requirements are. At least I thought it was obvious. Other colleges may not be obvious but this thread is about ASU.
That’s no different than me saying I’m from the South and UMass or Rutgers aren’t reputable. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, whether or not that opinion is ignorant. Not saying it is - as again everyone can believe what they want.
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Then why are you upset about it? And why would your student apply if your family doesn’t consider it a ‘reputable’ school?
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So chock the situation up to a lesson learned. Not all colleges calculate GPA the same way. For example:
- some just take whatever your SRAR (self reported academic record) weighted GPA is and they run with that
- other colleges want you to also have your HS submit a transcript to confirm the weighted GPA
- some colleges will accept even non-core academic subjects in your GPA
- others will only accept grades for core subjects
- other colleges (like ASU, U of A, UNM, etc.) only use unweighted GPA
If an important criteria for where one attends college is whether the school is ‘reputable,’ and if in your neck of the woods a specific college is not considered ‘reputable,’ AND if the ‘Is the college reputable’ a decision factor that is really high on your priority list, then why apply at all?
OR maybe you or your kid wants to major in supply chain management, in which case ASU is something like #1 in the country in that and you’d be silly to not consider applying there.
Is ASU on the same level as Harvard? Of course not. But they’re not trying to be. There’s a lot of different flavors of ice cream out there in Applying-To-College-Land.
Back when my D24 applied to college last year, my DH got all worked up over how 4 of the colleges she applied to (ASU, U of A, UNM, NMSU) all only used unweighted GPA in order to determine how much auto merit scholarship $$ you’d be awarded. He went on and on about how “it’s not fair” to kids who took harder classes and didn’t get A’s in those classes because the students who took “regular” HS classes and got ‘easy A’s’ were awarded more $$ than our kid was awarded.
So I will offer up as food for thought these words that I shared with my own spouse last year during that application process:
Tough. Get over it. All of those colleges list it (i.e., using UW GPA) explicitly right on their websites in black and white. They don’t hide it. You just have to go read it. Their scholarship award policies are right there online. The admissions departments talk about it in their presentations. It’s not their fault that you either didn’t read it or didn’t listen. And if it’s THAT much of a deal breaker, then YOUR KID DOESN’T HAVE TO GO THERE. So lick your wounds, take a break from the whole thing for a day or 2, and decide how you want to move forward.
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“Reputable” is the wrong word, but I understand the OP’s sentiment. Perhaps “prestigious” or “selective”? And there is a clear difference in regional reputation.
When I grew up in California, many students desired the Arizona schools as a viable alternative to the UC’s and CSU’s and graduates competed for the same jobs as UCLA and Berkeley grads in CA without prejudice. There was quite an alumni network embedded in most major California employers.
Having lived in the NE for the last 22 years and seen 3 kids through the college process here, the Arizona schools, at least at my kids HS, were safeties or schools for kids who were not on the highest tract or were chasing certain scholarships. They definitely were not considered first tier colleges. They neither had the reputations and in general schools that accepted the majority of students were not considered in this tier. And I assume it’s fair to suggest the same of Rutgers or UMass out of region. Heck, most students at my kids school in NJ considered Rutgers a safety until a couple years ago. Many ended up there because it was cheaper and easier, not because they considered it prestigious or their dream school. And that’s despite it being an excellent university (albeit with a horrible campus layout and too much focus on a money-losing sports program), just as the Arizona schools are. There is not a perfect correlation between prestige and quality.
The OP seems to keep focusing on rigor as being exclusively defined through GPA weighting which has been solidly established already is not the case at the majority of schools. Probably more common with public schools. It does matter for scholarships and certain programs at a very specific subset of schools, which is why students and parents should take seriously the responsibility of researching all the schools that will be applied to in advance. But unless one of those schools is their #1 pick throughout HS, it seems like a poor strategy to intentionally take less rigorous classes that the student can succeed in for this purpose since they may be slightly helping themselves for these specific schools but hurting their chances at many others. Though there is nothing wrong with deciding one step down from the most rigorous option is better if students are struggling in the most rigorous ones. This is common sense more that strategy.
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