<p>There are problems with a complicated formula having no clear principle behind it:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>it is obscure. Nobody knows what it means, except that higher grades, more classes and a higher proportion of advanced classes all elevate the score. This tends to discredit any specific attribution of valedictorian or top X percent status.</p></li>
<li><p>it is arbitrary. Why not 4 times the GPA, or 12? Opinions on what is fair will vary. The particular formula above is dimensionally incorrect (adding apples to oranges) and thus more open to challenge. </p></li>
<li><p>if the coefficients in the formula don’t strike a good balance, particular strategies such as “take lots of hard classes” or “inflate GPA with easy courses” will come to the fore (or more subtle variations).</p></li>
<li><p>If the formula does strike a good balance it is probably because it is approximately equal to something more principled, that one could set up directly, such as the weighted grade point sum.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>At our HS, Honors and AP classes earn 5 points for an A, 4 for a B, etc. Electives that are 5 days a week count toward the weighted GPA, as a result, students who take all or mostly Honors and AP courses for their core academic subjects do have their GPA pulled down by getting an A in 5 day a week elective courses. My D has chosen to take electives that she wants to take and has not worried about the <em>hit</em> to her GPA. She has a minimum number of credits to take each year and is filling them as she wants. That being said, I suppose there are kids who could load up on more AP courses and/or take only 2 or 3 day a week electives so no electives count in the GPA. Gym is 2 days a week and therefore does not count in the GPA.</p>
<p>1) If you do take electives (like band or something), it will hit your QPA (weighted GPA) even if you get a 100.</p>
<p>2) Honors and AP classes are both weighted the same (110%). So someone who takes all honors courses (extremely easy to get a 98+ it them) will have a higher QPA than someone who takes AP (unless the kid in AP can get 98+; which takes a lot of work).</p>
<p>Our high school does penalize kids who get As in non-weighted classrooms. P.E., Art, Band, Orchestra, Debate, PALS and a number of other classes will get you an A that is worth less than an A in an Honors/AP class. I wish they did do those classes pass/fail because I can’t take a class like photography without having to consider my GPA drop.</p>
<p>“higher grades, more classes and a higher proportion of advanced classes all elevate the score. This tends to discredit any specific attribution of valedictorian or top X percent status”</p>
<p>How so? Isn’t the point of a val or even top x% to choose the ones with the highest grades in the toughest classes? </p>
<p>In any case what I did not mention is that in D’s school class ranks are used only for college reporting purposes, our school does not have a formal val or sal. Any student can speak at commencement - it is based on an audition. Also all classes regardless of whether it is AP, Honors or regular are all graded on a 4.0 scale so no student ends up with a GPA higher than a 4.0 . The school used to calculate rank based on 5.0 (for Hon/AP) and 4.0 scale but that put all the kids in Band, Choir, Art, Theater etc at a disadvantage. I still do believe that as obscure it is, the current formula is more fair than the one we had before.</p>
<p>Nobody knows whether such a complicated formula does choose the ones with the highest grades in the toughest classes. All we know is that higher grades, more classes, and tougher classes improve one’s score. </p>
<p>In the absence of a clear meaning to the formula, people are left scratching their heads as to what it is measuring or in which direction(s) the formula might be biased. GPA has its problems but at least everyone understands clearly in which direction the measurement axis is pointing, and they can parse the results easily, whether or not they like GPA as a measure. </p>
<p>If there are, prior to making the calculation, five or ten plausible contenders for the top position (or top 3, or (X+5)% gunning for the top X percent), nobody can really articulate after the calculation in what sense the winners are better than the others except that “the formula said so”. In some loose sense they had more of the attributes that the formula combines but it is hard to say more.</p>
<p>It is possible for a complicated formula to be meaningful if it is calibrated so as to measure something else. For example, if in setting up the formula, the school selected the coefficients that give the best prediction of its graduates’ SAT scores over the past 15 years, then the formula acquires a clearer interpretation, whether or not the school ever reveals the secret sauce that went into cooking it up. This might be what (some) universities and corporations really use when screening applicants based on their college or high school transcripts: an index derived as a predictor of grades, or on the job performance.</p>
<p>Did my D’s rank suffer because of this? Sure - I think how the honors/AP students get hit even more at our school is that the APs are graded as if they were in college taking the course - no grade inflation at all (for instance, a grade in the 90s in the AP Calculus BC course is very rare), which pretty much defeats the purpose of the weighting. Most of the AP kids are also in either the very competitive Wind Ensemble or Select Choir, and those classes are not weighted…</p>
<p>That being said, D and the others in her class that fell out of the top decile of the class in favor of others that had no honors classes at all did all get into very good schools, many with great merit packages, so I guess our school’s reputation preceded them…</p>
<p>My bet would be that the school has added extracurriuclar sports as a “class” in order for students to meet the state’s phys ed requirement without taking an actual gym class. There are certain electives at our school that have no honors equivalent…band, phys ed. While these do pull down a weighted GPA, all students are treated the same because all students must have that credit for graduation. If your daughter already has her phys ed credit, she probably doesn’t have to use the tennis “grade.”</p>
<p>This happened to my son, who chose to be in the Marching Band for all four years of HS (a regular grade for two years, and an Honors grade for the other two). He ended up tied for #2. To answer FindAPlace’s question, The valedictorian went to Penn, and BOTH #2’s (including my son) are at MIT. I think MIT, in particular, looks beyond the GPA and class rank; they know the system can be circumvented. For instance, all dual-enrollment classes in our HS receive an AP-level grade, even if it’s a course in Art. I agree that class rank is important to some schools, even the elite ones - but it should be less important to students! No one asks me what my HS rank was at 52 yo.</p>
<p>In theory, weighting is flexible enough to solve these problems because the weights can be specified separately for every possible grade in every possible class. For example, if the calculus class is tremendously harder than all other classes, give more points for high grades in calculus than for the same grade in any other class. This is consistent with fairness and not penalizing students… as long as you don’t average the weighted grades (but do add them up). </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>There’s nothing wrong with putting lower weight on the music classes. It is the averaging that penalizes those AP kids for taking the low-weight extras.</p>
<p>My school just uses the “extra .5 for honors, extra 1 for AP/IB”, so yes, I guess those in non weighted classes are indirectly penalized, as someone with all A’s in AP classes will have a significantly higher GPA than someone with all A’s in regular classes.</p>
<p>Our school “penalizes” kids who take unweighted electives. Then again, it is the student who ultimately makes the choice to sign up for certain classes. Our school DOES offer honor electives, though (i.e., honors band, honors piano, honors spanish, honors digital arts). Even pass/fail classes affects those at the very top. Though students do not receive an actual grade, they receive credit for the class, which, when calculated, actually LOWERS your overall gpa. (imagine a 5-credit class with 0 grade points). Its a tragic thing. Our current valedictorian (who has at least a 4.8) had to craft his schedule before he entered high school so that he took every weighted class possible. Those who actually take the classes that interest them are ultimately penalized.</p>
<p>My senior-year school does not do weighted grading, which is completely fine as long as no rank is involved. However, there is - and several gym, photography, and home ec buffs are very well-off which is completely unfair to those who pursue rigorous schedules. I have a 4.0 so I currently share the top spot but I have 6 AP/College-Level courses and 1 foreign language course (along with a few self-study APs).</p>
<p>At my previous school, weighted grades determined class rank (5 - A, 4 - B for AP, 4 - A, 3 - B for regular couses) and last year’s valedictorian retook two AP classes that she took her junior year, took one new AP course, two study halls and went home at noon. In essence, she structured her entire education to just barely outdo the person in front of her. Even more troubling was that she only had two 2s and a 3 on her AP tests.</p>
<p>The only way to avoid these problems is to join more than half of US high schools and completely avoid class rank! The decile rankings suffice if some sort of ranking system is needed at all. A college can look at the student’s transcript and decide for itself, in the context of the educational opportunities presented at the given high school, how the student has performed.</p>
<p>our school does not penalize because only three honors/ap classes count for weighting the gpa. which is great, let’s you relax your courseload a bit, but creates a cluster**** in the competition for being valedictorian… we routinely get around a dozen and a half a year.</p>
<p>Yes, taking Symphonic Band has prevented me from achieving a 5.0 GPA for my junior and senior years, and therefore I have no shot at being among the top students at my school. I’m barely in the top 4% as a result.</p>
<p>I never really looked at it this way. It seems “backward”. It’s a choice. </p>
<p>You start with 4.0 then ADD if you take more difficult classes. If an industrious student is determined to take ALL academic classes (I mean, that’s what school is for, right?)…and they’re all honors/AP/weighted…then they’ve made the choice to have the top GPA.</p>
<p>But if a student (mine), decides that, regardless of their academic potential, they want to study theatre, music: choir/band/etc…then they’ve made the choice, KNOWING these are not “weighted” subjects. Oddly, these are all audition based/TOP programs in the schoo, and they’re mostly “co-curricular” with MORE time spent outside the classroom than AP homework entails. But…“that’s the way the cookie crumbles”, right? </p>
<p>No one is “taking away” anything (imho). It has hurt my D, to be sure, but…there aren’t many kids who would take 7 weighted courses every year. And those kids SHOULD be rewarded accordingly. And there are schools who would want those kids. But there are plenty of other schools that would say/think “hmmmm…is this a robot or a child”?</p>
<p>I’m from Texas, and sports count toward your gpa, but in our district you are only allowed to take the extra weighted credit for 4 out of 8 classes each semester, so taking nonweighted electives do not hurt you. Most opt to take all their core classes weighted (either pre-ap, or ap), and everything else non-weighted.</p>
<p>If you choose to take a 5th ap course beyond the core classes (like stat or psy) then you take it without receiving any extra weight, thus it is rare.</p>
<p>Almost 30 years ago, I was #1 in my class for freshman, sophomore and junior years. For senior year, my school offered for the first time ever, a weighted honors class. I continued to achieve straight As my senior year, but a classmate who took fewer classes that year (we were both in the honors English class) became #1 while I ‘sank’ to #2 due to the ‘penalty’ described by Sally. </p>
<p>It also seems inequitable when a student who transfers in from another high school, or another country, can jump into the top 10% based on only a few semesters at the current school.</p>
<p>My kids’ school does this, but it doesn’t rank. I think not ranking is good–it may keep you from having a valedictorian, but it makes the colleges look at the actual courses you took and what grades you got.</p>
<p>This problem has existed for a long time. In fact, I dropped an elective my senior year in high school for just this reason over 30 years ago.</p>