Does Your School Penalize Students With A's in Non-Weighted Classes?

Pre-College Topics High School Life
1

<p>Yesterday I received an “Ask the Dean” question from a mom whose daughter, a junior, is a straight-A student and also a varsity tennis player. This year, her high school started grading students in their sport and adding this grade to the GPA (!) This girl also got an A in tennis, but, because it’s NOT an honors or AP class (all her others are), the A in tennis will actually lower her GPA. (If this is confusing to you, read my post here: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/819275-how-do-admission-officials-decipher-your-transcript-2.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/819275-how-do-admission-officials-decipher-your-transcript-2.html&lt;/a&gt; … it’s #22. It will explain how this can happen, although it still won’t make a lot of sense :frowning: )</p>

<p>**So here’s the question … </p>

<p>Does YOUR high school penalize students who do more, even when they’re earning perfect grades in every undertaking?**</p>

<p>(Note that I’m talking about kids whose main academic subjects are all honors or AP but who get penalized by taking non-weighted electives or–in the case cited here–by taking part in sports.)</p>

2

<p>Students in our public HS have the option to take non-weighted electives as pass/fail…so they don’t screw up class rank (about the only thing I like about our ranking situation)…</p>

<p>I have never heard of a varsity sport graded…is it because they are playing a sport in place of taking a transcripted phys ed and they want to level the “playing field”?..(didn’t mean to be funny, but it came out that way)</p>

3

<p>That pass/fall option sounds sensible.</p>

<p>I’d never heard of grades in sports either. That’s a good point about athletics replacing P.E. and thus the “level playing field” (LOL). But, even so, high schools have let kids substitute sports for required P.E. for eons, and yet varsity sports aren’t normally factored into a GPA.</p>

4

<p>Well schols do have some regular undergrad requirements, like PE and Art (regular) that can effect GPA, even with an A like you said… My school also has religion, and there is no “honors” religion like they have at some religious schools. Although religion doesn’t screw up our GPA in comparision to others since everyone needs to take it.</p>

<p>I like the pass/ fail idea. </p>

<p>And the Varsity sports being graded is idiotic. However, I don’t think schools will look down on you for that haha, even if it does lower your GPA slightly. Also, colleges calculate their own GPAs sometimes to make it comparable to all applicants, in which case a Varsity sport grade wouldn’t even be a factor.</p>

5

<p>Our school penalizes students who do more as you have defined it. We have a limit on how many ap’s students can take for weighted credit; if you take more you get an unweighted grade for the extra ap course. Many students take the extra ap’s anyway. You can get weighted credit for up to 8 but we have many students who take 12+ AP courses. The AP limit was put in to ease stress and make students feel it would be ok to only take 8 ap’s. It doesn’t say anything about the AP limits on the school profile though.
We also have the situation you described of students taking fewer actual courses during senior year and ending up with higher gpa. That was news to me. Guess we are hoping college admsissions would see through all of this when comparing studnets from the same schools, sure hope that is correct because my daughter is taking the extra workload and otherwise being penalized as a result.</p>

6

<p>My school had something similar. They would give credit for marching band but it was unweighted, so it would actually be lowering my GPA. My band teacher let me just not accept the credit so I could keep my GPA up.</p>

7

<p>Our HS only uses 5 academic courses (Math, English, Science, History/SS, Foreign Language)to calculate weighted GPA. Students may select which courses to use for the calculation if they have more than one math course, for example. This seems to solve the problem described above.</p>

8

<p>In texas they aren’t allowed to count sports on your GPA if they did I would’ve had a better GPA. The whole weight system is horrible I had a total average of about a 92 last year but since I wasn’t taking any Pre-AP or Ap classes I was ranked really bedly.</p>

9

<p>Yes. The worst part is that there was a way out of it, but only a few students were given the information.</p>

<p>My high school required that we take one health class (0.5 credit) and two “practical arts” classes (1 credit). We were allowed to take these courses online through a special program, and many of the classes offered through the online program were pass/fail. But not only were very few students even told about the online option, but even fewer were told that taking a pass/fail class would keep them from lowering their weighted GPAs and impacting their class rank.</p>

<p>(When my friend attempted to explain the problem to our guidance counselor, the counselor told her that she was wrong and an A could not possibly lower her GPA–I believe that was the last time my friend visited the counselor.)</p>

<p>As a result, a couple of the most saavy students took as many of the online classes pass/fail as they could, and took fewer electives in general, so they got the GPA boost. Everyone else either took regular classes for a grade or chose online classes that looked interesting. It still kind of bothers me, and at the time I was finding out about it, it looked like it was going to determine valedictorian and salutatorian, which felt incredibly unfair.</p>

<p>Luckily, everything worked out. I still think that only academic classes should be considered, at least when determining class rank and weighted GPA. It’s the only way to keep things completely fair.</p>

10

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<p>Actually, the woman who send the original Ask the Dean query is from Texas.</p>

11

<p>Yes, and as far as I know, we don’t have a way out of it. I know it was my own choice, to an extent, but it still makes me angry that I was penalized for choosing to take Computer Graphics (I was designing a calendar for charity and wanted to improve my skills) and Arabic 1 (Not offered at an advanced level). As it is I’m ranked 24 out of a class of 694, but I know I would have been in the top ten if it weren’t for my decision to pursue my interests, even if that led me into the realm of (gasp) non-advanced classes.</p>

12

<p>My school doesn’t rank or calculate GPAs, but our grades are severely deflated in comparison to some of the local public schools, so it doesn’t really matter.</p>

13

<p>At my school, you are required to have one credit of art. This could be in the form of music or art. I have taken music–wind ensemble–all four years, and because of the reasons you have stated I take it pass/fail. You are allowed to take it for a grade, but I don’t want to artificially boost/lower my average when I know colleges just look at grades from the 5 major subjects.</p>

14

<p>Our high school gives weighted grades only for AP and Honors classes taken AT the high school. There are no weighted grades for art, phys ed, symphony, band etc., </p>

<p>The most advanced students are now allowed to take Honors high school math classes at the middle schools, but those grades are NOT weighted. So, if you take Honors Algebra II in 7th grade your A is only 4 points, but if you take it as an 11th grader (same class) you get a 5 point A. The most advanced students have LOWER GPA’s in 9th grade than other students. Students who take college classes also get unweighted grades.</p>

<p>These policies penalize students who go above and beyond, but so far we have not been able to change them. We hope that the colleges can see in the transcript that college classes and advanced coursework have reduced the grade point. For us, it’s more important that our sons be challenged, but other parents have advised avoiding college classes and symphony to get a higher GPA.</p>

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<p>This is one of the reasons I detest ranking. It encourages gaming the system. At our high school there are virtually no electives that one can take that are rated as Honors courses, even those that are among the most academically rigorous outside of the handful of APs offered. Not sure it has actually been done but I have heard stories that some kids have “protected” their ranking by taking study halls instead of electives. The other ploy that is used to boost ranking is to take basic college prep (“Regents”) courses instead of APs or honors courses. Some of the brighter kids have figured out that a 98 in a Regents-level class trumps a 94 in AP since the school only awards an extra 3 points (on a scale of 100) for APs and Honors.</p>

16

<p>Yes, my school does this. </p>

<p>Unfortunately, the school requires 5 credits (2 semesters) of both practical arts and performing/visual arts, all of the classes of which, given it’s your first year in it, are counted the same as a College Prep level class. Band students are assuaged, at least, in that their second year and on is weighted as an honors class. </p>

<p>We weight classes like so:</p>

<p>College Prep - +0
Honors/GT - +8
AP (excluding Calc BC) - +12
Calc BC - +14</p>

<p>On a somewhat unrelated note, I do find it annoying that honors classes are +8 as opposed to, say, +6 or +5. It’s very, very easy to get straight 99/100s in honors, after all, so the 4 point discrepancy from AP hardly makes it very equalizing.</p>

17

<p>I never thought this could happen, but my son’s report card is proof that this does indeed happen! My son, a senior, had taken theatre arts from his freshman year, always got an A and his cum was 4.33. This year, he has dropped theatre arts, and his gpa shot up to a 4.765 on a 5.0 scale. Seems completely wrong that dropping a class where he got an A, actually improved his gpa.</p>

18

<p>Yes. I’m currently enrolled in 5 weighted classes and 1 non-weighted classes. I received A’s in each class, so you’d think I’d get a 5.0. Nope, I have a 4.888 because the one non-weighted A brings my GPA down.</p>

19

<p>This discussion reminds me of the Blair Hornstine debacle from a while back (this is the girl who sued to ensure that she was the sole HS valedictorian). Long story short, one of issues at play was that Blair had an IEP and was exempt from some gym classes. </p>

<p>More info at: [The</a> Blair Hornstine Project](<a href=“http://www.tow.com/photogallery/2003/20030607_blair/]The”>http://www.tow.com/photogallery/2003/20030607_blair/)</p>

20

<p>My school sort of does this. I’m not 100% sure of the system, but what I’ve seen indicates that academic electives like Philosophy or Ethnic studies hurt but artistic ones like band or orchestra don’t.</p>

<p>In 08: My sister’s friend, Holly, took some unweighted academic elective. She had had a perfect GPA and was going to be valedictorian, but taking that class dropped her, somehow, to 4 (really, 7), while my sister’s friends John, Ann, Tony, and Lei (well, Lei wasn’t really her friend) remained vals, her friend Morris became the sal, and her friend Ruirui became 3rd (which really means 6th, since there were 4 vals).
This year: The same thing is happening to a girl I know. She, Rachel, chose to take Philosophy as a junior. She got an A in it, like she has gotten in all of her other classes but now she’s the sal, ranked 6th, while we have 5 others, David, Ryan, Sarah, Claire, and Allison, are the vals.
The thing about music and art courses, which I think is true, comes from the fact that Rachel has taken band every year and that would not have hurt her. Of the 5 vals I mentioned just above, two have done music throughout high school. Last year, one of the four vals, Claire, had been in orchestra every year, and of the four '08 vals, one, Tony, was in orchestra for all four years.
The only reason I can think of for that is that, whatever academic class one wants to take, there are Honors, AA, or AP options in the subject so one is deciding to take an easier course. By Subject, I mean like the subject of Math, Science, Social Studies, etc. Eg: When Rachel decided to take Philosophy, she was deciding to take an easier social studies. She could have had a course in the same general subject that was harder. On the other hand, when one decides to take an art, there are no Honors, AA, or AP options, so one has to take the regular course. Except, now that I come up with that justification, I’m realizing that my school has AP Art as well as regular art. Hmmmm.</p>