<p>yes, jackief, according to D’s naviance, the reported grades pretty much have to be weighted for a lot of the schools. Maybe that is not so for the tippy top schools, but many of the schools outside the top 50 have fishy looking numbers.</p>
<p>For the GPA listings, I figure if 4.0 is the top (or 4.3) it’s probably unweighted. I don’t really see how you could do weighted as there are so many different systems. Some go up to 5, some go up to 6. Ours goes up to 110 (theoretically). I notice a lot of the books don’t even put GPA - they put in class rank instead.</p>
<p>When S and H visited UMD, the admissions person at the journalism session said flat out that they take the GPA the way the high school sends it, and don’t recalculate/unweight it. I know that’s certainly not true at all colleges, however. Some are forthcoming about what they do, and some aren’t, so jackief is right to look at reported GPAs skeptically.</p>
<p>YDS-- think twice (and think twice again) before getting a chocolate fountain. At an event with young boy scouts. It can turn into an enormous mess! And congratulations to your son.</p>
<p>FAP, I found a friend who has one! That $300 price tag was for a much-bigger fountain than we needed and included all the goodies. I definitely think we can buy the fixings and such for less than $100.</p>
<p>I’m picking him up from the bus stop in a bit and taking him to sample cake at a fancy shop. He’ll be so pleasantly surprised!</p>
<p>ILoveLA, I realize I’m living on the edge here. :D</p>
<p>wow, congrats to the 09ers for breaking 4000 posts! :eek:</p>
<p>and of course congrats to all their kids receiving the wonderful acceptances!!</p>
<p>Youdon’tsay - your S’s party sounds like it will be very nice. Have fun selecting the cake.</p>
<p>Our high school reports both an unweighted and weighted GPA on the transcript. However the course grades are (unfortunately) all reported unweighted. So S2 has lots of 80-somethings on the transcript but a 96 weighted GPA.</p>
<p>mathmom-that’s exactly the way D’s transcript looks too. They report the letter grades, say if they are weighted or not, and then they list GPA and WGPA.</p>
<p>Our HS transcript has it all. There is a weighted GPA for some honors classes (following UC system guidelines) and all AP classes of A=5.00, so a 1.00 boost.)</p>
<p>For each class, it lists the name of the class (and also honors or AP if applicable) and the letter grade.</p>
<p>There is a boxed area that shows:</p>
<p>Academic GPA 9-12 (weighted and unweighted)</p>
<p>Academic GPA 10-12 (weighted and unweighted) (mainly to accomodate UC system)</p>
<p>Total GPA 9-12 (weighted and unweighted)</p>
<p>Credits attempted/credits completed</p>
<p>Class size</p>
<p>Class rank 9-12</p>
<p>Class rank 10-12</p>
<p>(ranked by weighted academic GPA)</p>
<p>If that leaves out anything, I’m not sure what!</p>
<p>Well yes, the '09 list should be beginning the process of bursting out all over with posts as the height of admissions decisions for RD hits cyberspace and snail mail.</p>
<p>I snuck over and read some of the posts. The parents are very excited, as they should be.</p>
<p>Hang on to your seats, 10s. Our turn will come next spring. Then, as a new crop of excited parents, we’ll really understand the meaning of “Spring has Sprung.” Even if it’s raining in SoCal or snowing in NY at that very moment in time. we’ll exhult with smiles and shouts of joy with our S’s and D’s.</p>
<p>Thinking in advance … I was thinking of having a fun, casual finger food party for my S and his closest friends who are graduating (and their parents.) Do you think having such a gathering would be better, say, end of May (but before Memorial Day), when college decisions have been made, or sometime in June, say, a week or two before graduation?</p>
<p>I should also add that they list D’s classes from 8th grade and don’t say what grade they were taken. In fact, none of the grades are listed. You would need to figure it out from the years listed.</p>
<p>From what I understand, the transcript will show weighted and unweighted grades and GPAs. The school doesn’t rank, so instead it will show the two highest weighted GPAs for the class. I believe it also show grades received on Regents exams and APs. The GPA includes all classes taken, including PE. Oh, and courses are listed by grade - including some courses taken in 7th and 8th grade.</p>
<p>FindAPlace - too funny about all the GPA and rank options shown on your S’s transcript.</p>
<p>I wish PE were included in the GPA - S always has 100 in that class! As it is, his HS doesn’t rank, indicates Regular, Honors, or AP courses (the latter two weighted by 1.0), and shows only weighted GPA. On the school profile it says:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>D’s school does not report rank. They only provide a school description (from which it is not even clear if D is in the top half).</p>
<p>D is finally downstairs doing a practice SAT. I guess better late than never.</p>
<p>Here in CA, class rank (or I should say percentile to be more accurate) is important to the UC system. They use it to determine which student junior year end transcripts (upon signed authorization) they will review for what’s known as Eligibility in the Local Context or ELC. A certain percentage (I forget now what it is and I’m not looking it up) of each HS graduating class, presuming they meet the UC A-G course requirements and a few other things, are guaranteed admission to the UC SYSTEM. It does not guarantee them a space at UC Berkeley, LA, San Diego or … I think Davis is the other one.</p>
<p>And the students still need to apply, of course. But this system provides an early read as to whether the student will at least get into the system. I believe there’s usually room at the inn at UC Riverside and UC Merced.</p>
<p>Our transcript also shows Regent’s scores and it sorts the classes by grade level, including any high school level classes taken in middle school. (Those middle school classes also count towards the GPA.) Rank will be reported, but they refuse to compute it or even reveal an estimate until late fall of senior year. I had no idea if S1 was number 1 or number 20. (He turned out to be number 8.) It seemed to me if they let you know earlier kids who cared could try and bring up their grades. It would have made no difference to S1. It might to S2. I’m told he’s “definitely in the top quarter, maybe higher”. I’d love to know how much higher!</p>
<p>For those of you whose schools do not rank, how is the valedictorian chosen? (Or are the rankings just not included on the transcripts that go to colleges?)</p>
<p>BengalMom - while D’s school doesn’t rank the students officially, they still figure out each student’s GPA, and the two highest are val and sal. Since the school grades out of 100, and there’s a good mix of regents, honors and AP courses that are weighted differently, I don’t think the school’s ever had more than one val. The val is announced after the mid-year grades senior year - but the grades that are sent out on the student’s official transcript are from the end of junior year. Since the students aren’t ranked, the school posts the two highest GPAs in the grade so that College Admissions reps can see how close to the top the student falls.</p>
<p>The high school I graduated from didn’t rank either, and they used the same system to choose the val and sal. The rationale is the same - the schools have a large number of high-achieving students and they don’t want to hurt a good student’s chances at the top schools by reporting that they’re in the “top half” of the class.</p>