Bonus Points for AP

Parents Forum
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<p>Interesting article in today’s Washington Post. I admit to a bias – my S’s school does not use a weighted GPA system, although there is some weight given to AP for National Honor Society. IMHO, the colleges themselves are very good at “weighting” AP, Honors, etc. when making their determinations, so I don’t see what the big deal is for admissions purposes. On the other hand, the complete lack of consistency in how schools handle these type of things could impact merit scholarships, I suppose. </p>

<p><a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64014-2005Jan10.html[/url]”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64014-2005Jan10.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>At our high school the weighting impacts the class rank the most. Since you do not have to take the accompanying exam, a lot of kids boost up their GPAs this way. There are several courses that have very low pass rates vs number of students enrolled. Some as little as 10%. Generally it is because those teachers grade easily or give extra credit. We have some AP classes where the class average is a 95, but out of 100 students 10 or fewer will pass the AP exam.</p>

<p>Where this really hurts is if you are applying to a school that heavily weights class rank.</p>