<p>My Daughter’s High School offers summer school, she took the PE class( a required credit) in the summer which before the freshman started. The school offers classes with credit as 4.0 (regular), 5.0(preAP) and 6.0 (AP). She took all preAP classes except one art class at 9th grade and got all high A, but we didn’t realize the PE was counted for her GPA calculation. Since other students didn’t take the class in summer, my daughter has one more class than the other and the credit of class it only 4.0, this caused her rant is 30th out of 600. She would be 3rd of 600 if she didn’t take the PE in summer. This looks like will impact her GPA a lot when she apply the college in senior year since other student can take this class during their senior year. Does my daughter need to explain the calculation when she applies the college? Any recommendation will appreciate.</p>
<p>Well that’s a stupid way of calculating GPAs. In our state you are required to take PE every year, so you can’t play this game, but in addition, only academic courses are used to calculate the GPA. Your best bet it to talk to the GC and ask if she can put a sentence in her recommendation letter that says something like “prepareInCollege’s daughter rank in class would be much higher if she hadn’t chosen to take the required PE course before her senior year.” If she’s willing perhaps she can also calculate the exact difference. This will sound much less like whining if the GC addresses the issue than if the student does.</p>
<p>That said, top 5% is a very good rank.</p>
<p>Is she a junior or a senior? Lots of times those straight A through sophomore year students shake out a few Bs junior year. What colleges is she thinking of applying to? What state are you in? These questions all make a difference, different schools make different calculations and I suspect a lot don’t consider a grade in PE in their GPA calculation. For example, in California the UC system does not take into account classes taken before sophomore year and also, as I vaguely recall, do not consider a grade in PE when calculating the UC GPA (which I also think matters more than rank, esp. if you are in the top of the class for ELC–automatic admission). Being in the top 5% ought to be good enough GPA-wise for most schools. How are her other stats?
I hope I am not falling for a ■■■■■.</p>
<p>Thanks very much for such so quick reply. We are in suburb of Houston, Texas. She is in Junior year now, but the PE she took in summer is really bother her. Her grade in sophomore was straight A also, but it didn’t help a lot, she is 24th of 600 now. I don’t think the rank will approve a lot at the end of junior year due to the above reason. I just think this sounds unfair for calculating GPA like this.</p>
<p>If the PE class is a required course then everyone will have that same issue - a low or non-weighted class. This is not a differentiator.</p>
<p>I think what she is saying is that is included in her daughter’s ranking at the end of jr year instead of sr year with everyone else, so in the end it would be equal but not now? I read it a couple of times and am still not sure.</p>
<p>Well you’ve got six months to try to raise a hue and cry and try to get the way they calculate GPA’s changed. Good luck!</p>
<p>If everyone has to take PE by the time they graduate then I’m trying to figure it out…everyone will have one class with a max 4.0 and on a 4.0 scale it wouldn’t matter if an A was 4.0 or 5.0 etc…don’t have time to do the actual math but not sure how this would impact her ranking…unless she didn’t get an A in the class is that what you are saying?</p>
<p>^No because PE is a 4.0 and with a weighted GPA APs and honor courses are 4.5, 5.0 or possibly more depending on the high school. If you take PE senior year you will only have half a year of it on your midyear report and none at all if you apply ED or EA. That said most colleges, while they pay attention to rank will also see the actual grades in the courses. If they see lots of A’s in challenging courses, there probably won’t be too much backlash. My younger son had lots of B’s in challenging courses, and was one student away from the top 5%, he didn’t get into any Ivy League schools, but he did get into Chicago, Tufts and Vassar.</p>
<p>The issue here is what will the GC check off on the LOR form. Will she check off that the student is top 1%, 5% (check out the common app GC LOR)? I would have a discussion with the GC about this. Ask her if she would/could check off 1%. A lot of schools don’t rank, they rely on the GC’s LOR.</p>
<p>D2 transferred when she was in high school. The new school wasn’t going to give her credit for honors courses from her previous school. It took us a while to get it all sorted out. But while we were sorting it out, the GC assured us that she would check off the box top 1% for D2.</p>
<p>Could you run more of the GPA math in more detail?</p>
<p>Just like MathMom said, when my daughter tries to apply the ED in senior year, she will submit the rank in Junior year. Due to the PE, she has one more course to be calculated for her GPA. e.g, except PE, she took the same courses and have the same grades with the student who is rank at 3rd of 600, but plus the PE which is only 4.0, her rank is dropped to 24th of 600. The admission office will focus on the rank, right? since they don’t know my daughter’s rank is impacted by the PE took in summer.</p>
<p>^^but 24/600 or 30/600 is still in the top 10%. Since high schools do things so differently and some don’t share rank at all you might go look at the common data sets or the websites and see if they even look at anything more granular than top 10% or ask the question of admissions how they use class rank. Check your school profile, also, and see how they describe their ranking system.</p>
<p>I don’t remember any of my daughter’s college applications asking for PE as part of the GPA. Since many high schools don’t rank anymore, others don’t weight grades, and still others do weight grades I think a lot of colleges calculate their own GPAs now. I wouldn’t spend another minute worrying about this. Good luck.</p>
<p>This is why our school district is in the process of going to Cum Laude and doing away with rank… forces kids to play games. The more ungraded periods you have/and AP or Honors classes… the better your rank. Stinks. On the bright side, my son is barely 10% but due to his high ACT, high GPA even with a standard language and 2 band classes ,
the rest of his schedule is all AP/Honors and he got in the school of his choice and the Honors College. Classes that heavily rely on rank he would have been in trouble.
We looked for the “holistic” approach…</p>
<p>Colleges are aware HSs are moving away from providing actual rankings. They then use the HS profile and the students data to interpolate where the student lies. Maybe student games are avoided but colleges still use the data at hand.</p>
<p>Get approval to add an AP-level online or college class next semester; that should offset the 4-pointer with a 6-pointer and force a jump in the ranking.</p>
<p>I don’t really understand what the rankings are all that good for anyways. I’ve seen students on these forums who are in the top 3% of their class with ACT scores of 25. D is barely in the top 30% and has an ACT of 32 (superscore 33). I guess a college that wants to maximize its numbers would reject them both…</p>
<p>OP, if the scores are that sensitive to one course, there’s a good chance the D will move up or down between now and the end of Junior year based on everyone’s junior courses and grades.</p>