Believe it or not, my student’s public high school is piloting a program for honors electives. So, yes, this year, PE/Health is an honors level class. It is a pilot program with Duke U and the curriculum is based on neuroscience, but it is still PE/health and it is weighed as an honors level class (4.5).
Another NC resident. Honors/APs availability and course taking pattern varies so much even within a state. My understanding is colleges recalculate all applicants’ GPA’s in their own way so they can make apples to apples comparisons.
And, as someone else said, they evaluate in the context of your schools/district. This last part is not hard for schools from which they get lots of applicants. It’s harder from districts/charters/privates from across the country and globe. I imagine the AOs have to do a bit more work sometimes, but generally UNC is very used to evaluating transcripts from all over.
Interestingly, UNC announced a couple years ago that it would not give more admissions favorability for APs beyond 5 or 6 (can’t remember exact number) total. This is partly to make sure students w/o access to more are not penalized (UNC is very focused on rural/first gen admissions.), and I think b/c of the ‘rat race’ of college admissions and pressure on students. I was hoping other top colleges might follow, but I’ve not seen evidence of that.
Honors gym? Give me a break, lol!
Last thing, soapbox moment: our school district names all students with unweighted 4.0 as a valedictorian. I think this is a great policy b/c it makes it easier to take band or ceramics which are not honors but still be valedictorian. Students aren’t ‘duking it out’ over minute differences in GPA for the top honor. My D went to small high school and was one of 10 valedictorians out of about 200 students. A few were not the very ‘top students’ b/c they hadn’t taken as many AP courses, etc. but I still think it’s great they were recognized.
I am in NC and the 1 for honors/2 for AP or college changed for us a few years ago. Ours is now .5 for honors and 1 for AP or college
1 for honors, 2 for AP, 3 for showing up for PE, grade inflation is out of control…
I don’t think it’s out of control everywhere, but unfortunately it does exist… I suppose.
My daughter’s HS (OOS) was extremely rigorous and had an unweighted gpa of 4.33 (for all A’s) with .33 added for honors classes and .66 added for AP classes. Gym was graded but was not included in their gpa. There were regular, honors and AP classes offered for art and music (AP music was limited to those few students who performed in places such as Carnegie Hall and these kids were moving on to careers in music).
As I mentioned earlier, UNC will look at each student within the context of their high school so as not to penalize students without access/limited access to programs. Unfortunately, K-12 education is not exactly what I would call equitable and is often dictated by a student’s zip code.
When we visited Emory we were told that some applicants come from schools that use a 10 point grading scale. They said they were very good at figuring it all out.
My son is in a small, college prep instate private school for kids with learning disabilities. They have no Honors classes, no AP classes, and no weighted grades. I have NO idea if he will get in because no one from his school has gone there (his school pushes small private liberal arts colleges.) He got a 33 on his ACT, has a 3.8 GPA (unweighted), and some solid ECs. We are in Meck Co. I feel like he is in uncharted territory!!
I am in the RDU area with DD21 and DS23. It is practically insanity. Because of grade inflation, honors classes mean nothing, AP classes are a minimum and even those have to meaningful AP classes and not easier ones. To top that, you have to take the AP exams and get decent grades. For NC state schools, 3+ on AP exam or they don’t count. Forget Duke, have to be in top 1-2% to get into UNC. State is easier as their stats are skewed by the engineering program. Most ok kids in the schools have 4.5+ weighted and pretty strong ECs.
What used to be the college course schedule game of manipulating GPA through scheduling choices has somewhat filtered down to high school.
APUSH at one school may not be the same at other schools depending on the teacher and their grading philosophy (these are the best and brightest so you start with a presumed A, versus this is one of the tougher AP classes so only 2-3 out of 20+ will earn and A). So maybe avoid APUSH and decide on another AP or Honors class that is easier. I know for a fact there are parents driving students to do this at our local HS. How much admissions see through this is unclear…
My S20 is a good math student, and an excellent liberal arts student (his SAT/ACT scores reflect this as well). So he pushed himself in math and took all honors classes - got a B in all of them up to this year where he’s in AP Stats and doing really well. So… that’s a 3.5 factored into his GPA weighted. Would he have been better off taking standard math and getting an A and the 4.0? I think not, it has been better for him to push and get a B - the hard work is long term going to make him a better student - but it hurts his GPA. He’s obviously not going to be a STEM major so presumably challenging himself in his weaker areas is a good thing. Even Presumably when Carolina says they do a holistic review this is the kind of thing they are looking at … the GPA by itself does not tell the whole story. And at least in state the admissions staff know the reputations of a lot of the schools - how rigorous they are and whether they tend to grade inflate/deflate.
In the end the stats do matter - but it seems recently at least that assuming the stats are in the ballpark - a personal story and narrative matters as much or more.
Huh. Though the in-state admit rate to UNC still isn’t that low. So I’ve got to think that you don’t have to be top 1-2% to get in to UNC. Though in the more competitive districts, it probably is tougher.
If you’re OOS, UNC is at least as difficult to get in to as a near-Ivy; possibly Ivy-level difficulty and you won’t be compared to in-state kids anyway.
BTW, I would expect a student in an AP class to get at least a 3 on an AP test. If most of the students in an AP class are getting high grades yet aren’t scoring at least 3’s, I wouldn’t consider that a true AP class. Remember that AP classes should be college-level difficulty, and a 3 would just be passing (equivalent to a “C”).
This is a very serious note to all parents…
If your child accepted the waitlist option and knows he or she IS ATTENDING another university, PLEASE let UNC know sooner rather than later AND WITHDRAW your waitlist spot so another student has a chance and the seat is not taken up…PLEASE!
Same goes for accepted students, if indeed your son/daughter has accepted/enrolled at their top choice school. It’s just not fair to the kids who have a chance between now and May 1 to go to UNC.
Here’s a question…are high school credits earned in middle school calculated into the GPAs (weighted/unweighted)? For some reason, in my Maryland county, Algebra taken in the 7th / 8th grade, and any FL taken starting in the 6th grade (all for HS credit) are never coded as honors so those classes bring down the weighted average.
In NC middle school grades for HS credit show up on transcripts but are not calculated into GPA.
Is that across all NC or in some districts? It is hard to tell what is a state-wide practice or policy when you’re out of state - for this particular thing, I know what my county does (they include them in the overall GPA) but can’t speak for the practice across state.
THANKS!
That is true across all of NC. No middle school grades are in the HS GPA.
Most of the people who are accepted have participated in honors, ap, and ib courses so instead of a 4.0 gpa it goes up to a 5.0 scale. I have a 4.8 gpa since my school only has honor courses.
Some of the GPAs they are averaging in still come from the students who attended NC High Schools when they were on a 6 point scale. It was common for high achieving students to have GPAs of 5.1 or so by graduation. Today, similar students are graduating with around a 4.6 or so, since the scale was changed to 5 points a couple of years ago.
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The valedictorian of my son’s school didn’t have a 4.7. He went to Harvard. In this day and age of grade inflation “reported” GPAs are less than helpful.
But it’s not just grade inflation, it’s the grading scale used. Some use a 4.0, others a 5.0, etc.
I’m the original OP and have come to realize that UNCs average weighted acceptance GPA (4.7) is not on a 4.0 grading scale, but likely a 5.0 or as some have suggested an older 6.0 scale. And since UNCs freshman class has 80%+ North Carolina residents it makes sense that the higher grading scale (not 4.0) would skew the average weighted accepted GPA to 4.7. To put it into perspective, UCLA and UC Berkeley average weighted GPA is “only” a 4.25 and these two colleges are higher ranked public universities than UNC. UNC is a great college but it’s a little misleading to state 4.7 as the average accepted GPA.
My OOS daughter had a 4.7 weighted gpa based on a 4.0 scale. That being said… I think instate is different.
My D20, instate, who is accepted already, has a 4.65 weighted on a 5.0 weighted scale (4.0 on a 4.0 unweighted scale).