<p>How important is it to be at an Honors High School. My daughter is a freshman at University High School in Tucson, which is generally ranked in the top 10 or 20 for public high schools around the country, depending on the website. She has been in the self-contained gifted program her whole childhood, and has gotten pretty close to straight A’s throughout.</p>
<p>As she nears the end of her first semester, she is looking at an unweighted GPA of 3.2. Can anyone provide insight as to how important it is to be at a school like this? Besides Art, all of her classes are Honors classes, except 1 which is actually an AP (Human Geography). The honors classes are not weighted at all, so is there any advantage to being in this program? Would we be better off moving her to a “normal” school, where she can taking non-honors classes and probably get straight A’s.</p>
<p>I’ve read that most colleges look at the student’s unweighted GPA. I’m sure the level of coursework taken becomes a factor a some point, but if she gets filtered out simply for not having a 3.5+ GPA, what difference does it make?</p>
<p>Universities are aware of the rigorous academics in selective high schools, and they will know that your D’s classes are all or nearly all honors and AP classes from a top-ranked high school, usually from their own research or as provided by the school. She is now in a school made up of high-achieving students, and she is facing the big fish/small fish challenges. It also depends on the field she is interested in. If she is STEM-oriented, a specialized school is an asset, and Tucson has a partnership with the University of Arizona. How rigorous and challenging would she find her local high school? She has several years to bring up her GPA; if she can stick out a full year, you would have a better understanding of whether she fits in or not, but I’d look at the school as an advantage.</p>
<p>In addition to the comments above, universities get a school profile with each transcript – this profile gives information about the school, classes offered, average SATs for students etc. so the college admission officer will be able to see the strength of the HS that way even if they are not familiar with the school. My kids went to a top, uber competitive HS which does not weight GPAs and they got into their top choice of colleges – I believe that the high school they went to was taken into account during the application review process. Still, it is important to be realistic during the college application process.</p>
<p>If you have concerns, I’d talk to your D about how she feels about her HS experience thus far and also talk to your D’s guidance counselor and try to get information about what kind of places students with her profile tend to end up at for college and if he/she thinks the HS is the best fit for your D (understanding that a lot can change between now and senior year). </p>