Class rank only reported in weighted GPA

2Devils
Thu, 12 Jan 2023 17:18:03 +0000

3SailAway:

do colleges know that certain high schools have a system which makes GPA more about how well you play the game, rather than rigor and grades?

My son took the same English and history classes as the kids who got the Honors designation. Honors is not a different class, it’s a designation added when the student writes an extra paper, or makes a presentation. This can also be done for classes like band and Latin. If you play your cards right, you can get a very high GPA without ever taking the hardest classes.

Yes, to some extent AOs who know the school well will know this. Our English and a couple other classes are similar: the honors designation is just a very large detailed paper. And, we have the situation where Honors and AP get the same 0.5 weight–and Honors (especially the ones with just one extra paper) are much easier than AP. When applying to college, kids are told that AOs look at the actual transcript compared to courses available (listed on the profile), and that taking the “hard” APs will be noticed, over similar GPA with a bunch of (easier) honors/AP/etc. We have one Honors foreign language that regularly gives A+ to essentially every kid in the class, for multiple years: the kids that pick that language have an easier path to higher GPAs, and it is well-known by AOs who see a lot of applications from the school. My kids didn’t take that language(language is picked well before HS), so we chose to shrug it off as out of our control.
Admission results at many colleges seems to validate this: true rigor is figured out by AOs and it counts.

However–doing even one extra paper is indeed “more rigor” that yours chose not to do, as @Mwfan1921 said. It really will depend on the rest of his transcript and how well the AOs know the details of his school. The bottom line is you probably need to meet with the school to get the details you are seeking.