GPA computing errors: a cautionary tale

Parents Forum
1

<p>Long story. My son is applying to Army ROTC scholarship. The process starts much earlier than the regular college application deadline. In late August, he made a request to have his transcript and a grade/GPA related Army form filled and sent to Army. I checked the copy of the form the school sent. When I saw the GPA, I was shocked: it looked too low. I built an excel speadsheet to compute his GPA, and mine came out about 0.6 higher than what was written on the form.</p>

<p>When I expressed my suspicion that something is wrong, I got the standard response of “We have been doing this umpteen years, and we know what we are doing. there is no error”. I had to use the line “I have a Ph.D. with Statistics as a minor. I know what I am talking about”</p>

<p>The bottom line is, after working with the school official for 5 weeks (!!!), I finally managed to get them to admit that they had a computer glitch in GPA computation. So, the difference between wrong GPA they originally sent to the Army ROTC scholarship HQ and the correct one is about 0.6 on a 4.0 scale (HUGE). This was not just one error, but two errors combined that created this huge difference.</p>

<p>Error 1: the computer program that calculated GPA and class ranking had a system error. That is, if there is a change in a letter grade in any course (sometimes, teachers make a mistake in entering a letter grade, and upon realizing that, they correct it), the program considers the grade to be F no matter what the actual grade was when it is converting the letter grade into number to compute the GPA. My son was one of those kids whose letter grades were changed in a couple of course. </p>

<p>So, unknown to him, his GPA that was calculated was based on the assumption that he got F in two courses. Turns out, there are many kids who had the same problem. Worse, several schools in the district were all using the same computer program. </p>

<p>When they finally admitted their error (after 4 visits to the school and many phone calls), several schools in the district all had to recalculate the GPA and completely re do their class ranking. </p>

<p>Note that this went on for years undetected. God knows how many kids had their GPA all screwed up because of this. Granted, many competitive colleges recompute GPA based on the letter grades anyway, and they do examine course load, etc. However, I am told that in many large public schools, they simply take the GPA the schools sent, and they don’t have the manpower to recompute GPA or carefully examine each grade. I bet there are kids for whom, this error was the cause of them being rejected. Who knows…</p>

<p>When the correct number came out, my son’s GPA improved by 0.3 and the difference in the class raking % was 9% (improvement). I think this is huge.</p>

<p>Error 2: the school uses 4.5 scale. The Army wants GPA on a 4.0 scale. So, the guidance counselor had to manually convert the scale proportionately. He made an arithmetic error. Starting with the WRONG GPA by the computer glitch, he made it worse by making another arithmetic error. When he computed again, it improved the GPA by another 0.3 on a 4.0 scale.</p>

<p>Bottom line: If I did not check the forms that were sent to Army, if I did not suspect that something was wrong, and if I did not have the “seeming authority” (as somebody who has a Ph.D. with a minor in Statistics), this could have been a difference between him getting the scholarship worth up to $250K and no scholarship. (given that his SAT and GPA is lopsided, meaning, GPA is his weaker point, the last thing he needs is the GPA number pulled down further) </p>

<p>Moral of the story: CHECK EVERYTHING, EVERY LETTER, EVERY NUMBER ON THE FORM SENT BY THE SCHOOL. ERRORS DO HAPPEN.</p>

2

<p>I agree that us parents need to stay on top of the transcript/class rank process. We had two concerns.</p>

<p>1) I had requested a copy of S2’s transcript at the end of his Junior year because I wanted some sort of record of his class rank. Because of the economy, his class has lost about 35 kids and we are now down to 198. As luck would have it, all of the departing kids had a GPA less than my S so this has really affected his class rank.</p>

<p>2)Because I had the transcript in the old format I was able to compare it to the GPA shown on Naviance. They are not the same. Naviance has my S at 3.9810 and the transcript at 4.008. The difference is only .027, but psychologically this is huge.</p>

3

<p>Being an advocate for your child is so very important. I think that is why most of us are here on CC. </p>

<p>Fortunately for our family, our GC has been very supportive and cooperative of our application process. We requested a six-semester transcript as well and questioned our son’s class rank. His counselor discovered that his grade for mentoring freshmen during seminar hour was showing as Incomplete. That moved him up to where we thought he should be.</p>

<p>Most GC offices are overloaded with responsibilities. Part of me wants to become a full-time volunteer there after our son graduates. Of course, I’d have to quit my job to do that but that would change our FAFSA EC, wouldn’t it :)</p>

4

<p>Yes. By fall of senior year, I think students and parents should:

  1. Review transcripts through junior year for GPA and course accuracy,
  2. Review the school profile that the counseling office will be sending to colleges. These can contain errors, too.
  3. Confirm if the HS transcript contains SAT and/or ACT scores. If it does and you don’t want all scores disclosed, fight to get them off.</p>
5

<p>I work at a university and we became affiliated with a local technical college.</p>

<p>Part of my job was to help convert data from their system into our computer system.</p>

<p>As part of the checks and balances, I was comparing student GPAs after the conversion - to make sure everything looked good. They weren’t matching.</p>

<p>Discovered the “old” system had a glitch - all courses were treated as if they were the same credit hour/weight. They had programmed it that way. One of the employees helping me with the conversion is a math professor. The look on her face when she found out how they were calculating GPA was priceless.</p>

<p>The converted transcripts are now correct. But I second the recommendation to always check it yourself!</p>

6

<p>A small change led me to question my D’s transcripts at the start of Sr. Year. She’d always been ranked #8, and suddenly she dropped to #12. No stellar new students had arrived in the summer between Jr. and Sr. year…so I calculated her GPA myself and found the weighted GPA was off by .8! Which actually ranked her as Salutatorian. It was wrong all throughout her HS career and I never thought to question it until then.</p>

<p>It was a huge fight/headache to make them fix their mistake. The official district policy was no change to transcripts in Senior year, period. We had to raise a stink to superintendent level to make them reissue it with a correction.</p>

<p>So, yeah–check them!</p>

7

<p>My son’s GPA was also miscalculated by the school. Their system was improperly programmed and so there was some problem with those quarter year classes like senior health being treated as full year classes, or some such thing. Then, when my D was in high school, their Power School program kept changing grades to zeros, and also the teachers were in the bad habit of putting in zeros as place savers for grades still to come, rather than using dashes. It was nightmare! Definitely, definitely, keep on top of this. So many parents just assumed their children had forgotten to turn in their homework.</p>

8

<p>I love online grade reporting for this exact reason. It is so much easier to see what’s really recorded. Along the way, my daughter had a quiz grade of 96 (A) incorrectly entered as a 69 (C) and several assignments listed as missing (F) that had actually been graded and returned. She learned to save all returned work, and to check every week that everything was right.
Thank you for the heads up on the transcript…i would have taken it for granted that if the course grades are right, the GPA would be right, too. Yikes.</p>

9

<p>all these stories are really amazing, aren’t they?</p>

<p>What amazed me was, how come nobody, student or parent, got suspicious about this. In our district, it went on for several years in several schools!!! As I mentioned in my original post, several schools in our district had to completely recompute GPA for everybody and re do the class ranking after they acknowledged the computer glitch.</p>

<p>Even on a 4.5 scale, that 0.3 GPA difference moved my son’s class rank a FULL decile (9% to be exact). Then they made another 0.3 worth of error when they converted it to a 4.0 scale, resulting in my son’s GPA with 0.6 error on a 4.0 scale. </p>

<p>Some kid’s GPA may have been screwed up even more than my son’s (remember in this case, any letter grade changed by a teacher was treated as F in computing the GPA). God knows how many kids applying to large public schools that use the GPA as reported in the transcript as one of the main admission decision factors were affected!!!</p>

<p>I think all parents or students should build their own excel spreadsheet and compute the GPA to make sure that the school computer program is spitting out the right number.</p>

10

<p>It is because of CC that I checked DD’s senior transcript (Fall 2006) in the fall prior to submitting to colleges. It seems that she “earned” a C in a class she thought she had an A in. She met with the teacher to ask what she had done to drop so much, and the teacher was flummoxed, as he had her down for an A,too.
The teacher submitted the necessary paperwork to have it changed…and a week later-it still was not changed, and we were getting into college deadlines-PLUS they were about to determine who was Valedictorian. Thankfully, I had a copy of the paperwork from the teacher as the staff could not find it. I decided to take the day off from work, plop myself down, and wait for it to get changed. DD now had it correct, earn the position of Valedictorian, too. TG for CC!!
-APOL-a Mum</p>

11

<p>I would recommend that the parents and students not be content to check just the individual grades. Don’t assume that if the grades are correct, the GPA must be also.</p>

<p>In my son’s case, all grades “appeared” correctly. It’s the computer program that converted the grades to GPA that was screwed up. this is why I recommend that the parents or student build their own spreadsheet.</p>

12

<p>This a great post since it too happened to one of my son’s friends which meant he did not receive a merit scholarship he was entitled to receive. Thanks for reminding us.</p>

13

<p>I’ve actually calculated my D’s GPA every quarter of high school. No excuse except for a touch of obsessive/compulsiveness.</p>

<p>I also, based on CC advice, requested her transcript last summer…just to make sure it was correct after 6 semesters.</p>

<p>I’ve never found a mistake, but after reading your stories, boy, am I glad I’ve been checking!</p>

<p>I expect I’ll keep doing it through college. I don’t seem able to stop. :)</p>

14

<p>I echo the previous comments. I had to actively intervene with my son’s GC, who could not get the transcipt right after 4 tries at re-running it. I am not sure she ever knew why there was a problem - and it also resulted in a GPA movement from 3.9 to 4.2. Even after she claimed it was corrected, and the correct ‘letter’ appeared, the program somehow weigted the ‘old’ grade, and did not accord it ‘weight’ even though it was an AP class. Although we did not discuss it, I do think the difference affected the decile that DS2 falls in - from top 10% to 5%</p>

<p>Worse yet, my other DS may have had transcripts sent to colleges with the incorrect grades - only discovered after all college decisions were in. In his case, the error was the difference between a 2.6 and a 3.6 junior year ! While the GC denied that the ‘wrong’ transcript went out, I doubt her to this day, and think that she’s not quite honest on that with me. </p>

<p>Check and re-check. IF there were a means to send out the transcripts without going thru the school, I would use it. And, check each one.</p>

15

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<p>Even though you can’t send transcript without going through the school, you can make a request to see EXACTLY what was sent to the colleges, scholarship committee, etc. Note that a transcript is NOT a rec letter, you can rightfully make a request to see it before it goes out. Furthermore, if there was an accompanying form that needs to be filled out by the GC, you have every right to make a request to see it, as long as the forms require “factual, objective data” driven information. </p>

<p>I made a request to GC that I would like to have EXACT PHOTO COPIES of all the forms, transcripts and other supporting materials the school sent to the Army ROTC HQ. My motivation was not to see if there was any error: I heard that the paperwork handling at the Army scholarship HQ can be really screwed up at times, and I thought “I should have all the exact copies of document in my possession so that in case they lose my son’s stuff, I can fedex it or scan/email it at the last minute”. </p>

<p>Boy, am I glad that I made this move. I caught the error when I saw the information entered into this accompanying form.</p>

<p>Note that if I just checked the transcript, I might not have caught the mistake. All the individuals grades were correct, and the 0.3 GPA difference on the transcript (4.5 scale) would not have alerted me. (I had a rough idea where my son’s GPA should fall based on his grades even without spreadsheet, and this 0.3 difference would have been “in range”).</p>

<p>It was when I checked the “data” entered in the Army Scholarship Form that needed to be filled by the GC regarding 4.0 scale reporting etc, that I noticed that something funny was going on.</p>

<p>Also note that my “request” to have exact photo copies of the stuff sent to ROTC was considered “very unusual”. GCs told me that nobody, parents or students, current or past, who applied to the service academies or ROTC scholarship made this request of receiving exact photocopies of everything they sent from the school, and were puzzled by all the OCD symptoms I was displaying. It looks like, most students just hand in the form that needs to be filled and then sent directly from the GC to the ROTC HQ. They have never seen exactly what was sent and what was on the form filled by the GC.</p>

<p>I honestly believe that the 0.6 GPA difference reported on this form (out of a 4.0 scale) would have made a difference between him getting a scholarship or not - this year, it’s going to be very competitive to get a 4 year scholarship due to the budget cut and what not, and GPA was his weak point to begin with (his SAT is at top 3-5% range).</p>

16

<p>If your child’s transcript contains information about their EC’s and leadership positions held, make sure these data are correct too. They weren’t in my D’d case. They left off a number of school-based things (team captain, team MVP, club president) that should have been included, yet incorrectly listed her as having won a regional honor she hadn’t really won. And when we tried to correct the latter problem and told them it was a mistake, the guidance secretary sent back a snippy note saying “No, it’s correct as is” and attached a copy of some awards program that said she’d won it. So do people ordinarily demand that their high schools NOT include on their transcripts awards they’ve actually won? We had to be a little nasty before they’d remove the incorrect thing; I had visions of schools rejecting D for lying about her qualifications! And for the things they didn’t include, they said they don’t usually list them. I failed to understand why they refused to certify school-level honors about which they had knowledge, yet wanted to certify receipt of external prizes about which they obviously had no accurate records.</p>

<p>Another thing we had to bother them to remove was D’s SAT scores from the Johns Hopkins Talent Search in 7th grade! I had visions of some adcom looking at her transcript very quickly, not noticing the date, and thinking those were her current scores!</p>

17

<p>“Fortunately for our family, our GC has been very supportive and cooperative …”</p>

<p>Yes, I’m beating the same dead horse again I know, but still … when I asked GC for a copy of D’s transcript (so I could check for errors) she responded “You don’t need that.” You heard it here first … transcripts are PERFECTLY ACCURATE and computer systems are INFALLIBLE. Our GC says so.</p>