I am currently a junior (Ranked 1st) at an international american-curriculum school. Next year, I face the issue of having exhausted most of the classes offered at my school. I will have completed AP Chemistry, Physics C, and BC Calculus by the end of this year. My international school offers no course beyond these. However, I have do have to option of moving back to my public school in the US where I would be able to take more advanced courses at the local community college. The problem with this is that my rank will plummet when I transfer to the public school as the grading is highly inflated there.
What would be the better option for me?
Your rank is far less important than your schedule’s actual content and your grades within it, and you’d likely still shine at the American school.
Your guidance counselor will be asked to compare you with the rest of the student body. Regardless of your GPA ranking, considering you’ll be taking advanced calculus in senior year they’ll likely place your schedule very highly.
Your guidance counselor would (should) also include some info about that international school when you apply to university.
One big question, though, is your current unweighted GPA. Is it the American school’s weighting, or your school’s particlar intensity?
I currently have a 4.00 unweighted GPA but the American school calculates GPA on a 100 point scale. So while in the international school a grade above a 90% is considered excellent, in the American school its merely average.
The international school will need to provide the grading scale and indicate that on that school’s grading scale 90= a or A+ or top 10% or top 1%in school or ‘denotes top 5% regional ranking’ or whatever applies.
The international school profile will also need to be included.
Numbers are used differently depending on schools (and cultures) but an A is an A.