<p>In our school an unweighted A+ is a 4.33, and unweighted A is a 4.0. I don’t recall what an unweighted B+ is- have to look it up. An unweighted B is a 3.0. You need to add up the grades from 9 th and 10 th grade and divide by the number of credits. Remember to calculate half for a half year course. A student can have an unweighted GPA that is higher than a 4.0.</p>
<p>My daughter’s Naviance acct has her weighted GPA, as do the transcripts.</p>
<p>Good luck to everyone tomorrow!!</p>
<p>Good luck to the test takers! D. is taking the history test tomorrow. </p>
<p>Her school’s science bowl is getting ready for the practices - getting excited!</p>
<p>As I write, D is shopping with friends before the Friday Homecoming football game and tomorrow is the Homecoming dance. She’s attending the dance with a group of girlfriends, as she has each year. They all dress up, go out to eat, go to the dance and just have fun. </p>
<p>That’s one of the main reasons she didn’t want to do the SAT tomorrow. Good luck to all who are doing it!</p>
<p>OHMomof2, Homecoming was the reason my D didn’t take the ACT a few weeks ago. Hope she has fun!</p>
<p>I was thinking of the kind of unweighted that removes the +/- effect as well as any effects from honors and AP stuff. I guess there are different kinds of ‘unweighted.’ Pretty sure the colleges will remove the A+ 4.33, if not the rest of +/- when calculating. Or am I wrong? Our district HSs have no weighting or +/-, very basic, so never had to think about this. Can’t have Val/Sal. There is a state scholarship useable at state schools given to the top 4 or5 kids at each HS and they have to go to test scores to do tiebreaker.</p>
<p>As I understand it weighting refers to AP/honors being worth more in the calculation than a class that isn’t.</p>
<p>Our HS used to have only unweighted GPA but did give a 4.3 to an A+ and does have +/-.</p>
<p>This year, however, due to pressure from parents whose kids aren’t getting certain guaranteed merit awards and scholarships with only thier UW GPA, they have re-introduced both weighting and class rank, and have gotten rid of the A+ being worth more than 4.0 policy.</p>
<p>When my S was in HS he took some AP courses because he wanted to take them (more interesting teacher, students, whatever) or in some cases he wanted to have rigor. Some kids avoided APs to protect their GPAs, but not kids who were aspiring to competitive colleges or just enjoyed doing somewhat more advanced/faster paced work.</p>
<p>My D has and is taking some for the same reasons, but now she will get a weighted GPA/rank bump from them too. I get the sense that the weighting is only helpful for certain schools that use a GPA formula to award merit and allow the weighted to be part of that, but I guess we’ll see. Exactly half of her HS years are graded under the old system and half will be under the new. So she gets to keep her GPA based on 4.33 from before and have that averaged into the new unweighted GPA of 4.0, and she gets the 5.0 scale for all AP/advanced classes…but not retroactively.</p>
<p>I think the GCs are going to have to formulate some kind of generic “we’re in transition” paragraph for the school profiles.</p>
<p>It remains to be seen how this weighting/ranking will affect the kids. Already AP classes have a lot more students in them, but IDK if it is a good thing.</p>
<p>Our Homecoming is tomorrow and my kid never shopped for a dress- no time. Tonight she works the football game. Thankfully she has a collection of dresses and does not mind wearing one again. </p>
<p>Our school only puts the weighted GPA on Naviance and on the official transcripts. Some schools re-calculate. For example when I called Northeastern they told me that they re-calculate everyone’s GPA according to their formula so that they compare apples to apples. </p>
<p>Protecting the GPA can work against you. If you are a kid getting all A+s in regular classes there are many schools that will wonder why you did not challenge yourself more.</p>
<p>twogirls, our Homecoming is tomorrow also, but my S is too shy to go. Oh well.</p>
<p>3girls–what you have described is interesting regarding orchestra. My S is in the Youth Symphony. It is the largest one in our Metropolitan area so it draws kids from all parts of the city, so we parents don’t really know each other. I don’t think parents hang out at the rehearsal hall because it is too squished and there is just enough room for the musicians! I haven’t experienced that degree of competitiveness within my son’s instrument section. The kids all know each other and are fairly laid back with each other. The kid who is first chair really is truly brilliant–one of those amazing genius talents who will most likely get into Curtis. My niece was in the same orchestra and it was much more competitive in her section, I think. Now that she is in college she has made comments about the politics within her section. So it is interesting–two kids, same orchestra, two different experiences.</p>
<p>Momsings my daughter is not interested in the “after” dance- wants no part of going out after. She is willing to go out to eat but nobody is interested- they are all going into the city. Mine will probably come home and do work!</p>
<p>herandhisMom – It’s latchilever with the “bright … homework optional” S. My daughters only wish they were homework optional. ;)</p>
<p>suzy100 – our HS lists W & UW Academic, UW & W Total, and W & UW (10th-12th) GPAs on the transcript, per University of California guidelines. Yes, six different GPAs!</p>
<p>3girls3cats – it’s a good idea to get an unofficial transcript before you need one, so you can look it over and make sure that the school has recorded everything correctly.</p>
<p>Throwing in my good luck wishes and positive thoughts for all the SAT takers tomorrow. D2 is taking her last practice SAT tonight and hitting the rack early. Luckily for us, homecoming was last weekend so there wasn’t a need to choose one or the other…or head into the SAT with bleary eyes. :)</p>
<p>After tomorrow, she’ll take a few days off then start back on the occasional practice PSAT test. The next few weeks will be pretty hectic, but if she can survive them she’ll have a decent break until the school-wide ACT for juniors in the spring.</p>
<p>Momsings, don’t you love when there is one of those genius kids in the orchestra? (Especially when they are nice.) Amazingly enough, D’s little school orchestra has been blessed with a series of these kids and she’s found that they have been inspiring and wonderful leaders. Maybe it’s harder when there is a small group of kids who are highly talented but not quite to that degree. They all work so hard, I’m sure those who are completely invested in their music (or dance or sport or whatever) keenly want that top spot. I think it’s best when the parents stay out of it.</p>
<p>My D is also too shy to go to Homecoming or, for that matter, most school dances.</p>
<p>Mihcal–really? Is this typical for California schools? I have never seen a transcript but I can only see the weighted gpa when I look at the naviance scattergrams. I was under the impression that the transcript would use letter grades not numbers.</p>
<p>Our school gives them a copy of their unofficial transcript next week with their weighted GPA. I can see her weighted GPA on Naviance and it’s right so I doubt there will be errors on the transcript. </p>
<p>I told her to take her transcript and walk away. Do not discuss anything with anybody. Last year it was yanked out of her hand.</p>
<p>Every weekend she does her SAT homework and last weekend she did a math practice test from the ACT. I told her that starting next weekend she will add one practice sub-test each week from the red ACT book in addition to the SAT. She did not argue but the night is still young! If she can get the same percentile on the ACT that she got on the PLAN then she is done. </p>
<p>Once again good luck tomorrow for all the test takers. Remember to make sure that your answer booklet does not have any pages stuck together!! Happened to my daughters during the SAT 11 and she had to re-write the answers and they had to fill out a special paper etc.</p>
<p>Our unofficial transcripts also have 6 different calculations. We have weighted and unweighted 9-12, academic weighted and unweighted 9-12 and weighted and unweighted 10-12. It does make it challenging to say the least.</p>
<p>Both my boys seem to be well liked on their sports teams, but I always take my camera and position myself away from the crowd so I can get the perfect angle (and stay away from “those” parents).</p>
<p>S2 will take the PSAT on October 19th, and the PLAN on November 16th, but really just to give him an idea what to expect when he takes the real things for the first time later. Since he does fall and spring sports, we’re looking at May/June for SAT or ACT depending on if he does drastically better on either Pre test.</p>
<p>My S15 will be checking in for the SAT in the UK in 5 hours. I hope it goes well. He’s taken ACT type tests since 3rd grade (Explore and then the ACT for academic talent search) but he’s never tried the SAT. I wish I could pack his sharpened pencils, calculator and snacks. 
I’m sure he’ll be fine but parenting from afar stinks. I’m getting ready to send him a care package for his birthday. All he wants is peanut butter chocolate candy (Reese’s etc.) because they don’t have that in the UK. Good luck to all the test-takers! Give them a hug for me!</p>
<p>My DD takes the SAT tomorrow as well. First time taking it when it counts, she has taken in 7th and 8th grade and done well, so feeling the pressure to score well about her previously high schores. Essay is the most difficult section for her. I think she would score better if it started at 10am…Good luck to everyone testing in the morning!</p>
<p>CT1417, My H just figured out how to recover some items saved on our old computer from the cloud the other day. I am not even attempting to understand all of that. </p>
<p>Twogirls… no co-pay…lol </p>
<p>Good luck to all the test takers tomorrow! I hope everyone comes out feeling positive. </p>
<p>I told D that I had come to the conclusion that it really didn’t matter what she got on the PSAT (since schools on her ‘of interest’ list don’t seem to offer any financial award for it) and that, though doing well on the upcoming SAT would be great, it also doesn’t matter a lot, since she doesn’t have to report those scores, and can retake it…so I promised her I would relax on “encouraging” her to study. She was very happy to hear that. She said that some of her friends aren’t taking the PSAT; one friend asked the teacher if he should take it, she said yes, so he said he’d sign up for it. So it seems D is right that prep for the PSAT is basically non existent. It really hadn’t even occurred to me that the PSAT was optional for Juniors.</p>
<p>She says, having taken the PSAT and PLAN last year, that she liked the PLAN/ACT better, but doesn’t really remember why, just the overall impression, I guess. So, I told her, since a big goal for her this year is to reduce stress, that I think it might be OK if she just wants to focus on the ACT and not even worry about taking the SAT. She says She’ll probably go ahead and take the SAT (she’s signed up for the early November test), but I suspect that may be with NO studying first, so I need to look into that, to make sure it won’t negatively affect her if she takes it and doesn’t score well.<br>
Time to start researching the ACT more, since it seems the majority of what I have read is about the SAT.</p>
<p>The ACT is a more straight forward test. The issue is the timing- they have to get used to doing the test quickly. </p>
<p>I had stuff stuck on a cloud once- I have no idea what that means or how it got there, but my daughter is the one who fixed it.</p>
<p>shoboe–only ‘risk’ of taking SAT w/o studying and not scoring as well as your D would like is if she applies to any schools that require that all scores be sent. There are a few of them, so if she has a tentative list of schools, you may want to check their score reporting policy. I believe (please confirm) that a school’s policy could read that all ACT must be sent OR all SAT, so she may have an out. Again, not many schools require this.</p>
<p>Before I engaged a tutor, his advice was to have the student complete two full SAT & two ACT practice tests at home, self-score, and then decide which test to prep for, but only choose one. As he said, I could pay him to administer these practice tests or do it for free at home, but he definitely felt that it was a waste of the student’s time to be attempting to prep for both tests since they are quite different. Having said that, I couldn’t imagine the thought of having my son sit through four full practice tests just to decide what he should start studying, so we just went with the SAT as it was the test I knew.</p>
<p>Agree with twogirls that ACT is more straight forward, but requires students to work at a quicker pace. Also, ACT math will include some trig whereas SAT does not include material beyond Alg. I have heard that vocab might be more tricky on SAT but cannot confirm. </p>
<p>SAT math, in particular, has a habit of attempting to trick the student. For example, questions asks for 3X and along the way the student needs to solve for X, but the answer they want is 3X. Well, choice A will often be X, and students select that reply in their haste.</p>
<p>Good luck to all test takers. I just sharpened the last #2 pencils needed for a while–or so I hope!
.</p>
<p>Hah! I bought a box of pre-sharpened No. 2 pencils today. I suppose that we should check the calculator batteries too.</p>