Fairfax Grading Tough -- 94% an A

CountingDown
Fri, 09 Jan 2009 19:06:48 +0000

Consolation, the same thing happens to kids who attend selective admission programs that draw from schools around the district. Program may admit kids in the top 2% of the school system, but when the top 2% make up 20% of the class at the high school where the special program lives…it really bleeps up rankings.

Our school system doesn’t rank, but they provide charts of XX% of kids had a 3.75+ UW, XX% had a 3.51-3.74, etc. Not too hard to figure out where a student falls – but that chart doesn’t separate out kids who are taking seven Honors/APs/IBs from kids who are not taking any advanced courses.

S1 was burned for a top 10% scholarship in exactly the above circumstances. S2, in a similar situation, will also have a rank that does not jibe with his courseload/scores. I don’t think there’s a perfect system, but I do think there are colleges out there that pay attention – and not just small, selective ones. The trick is identifying those schools for each student.