Wow! Congratulation to those who have already finished applications and DOUBLE Congrats to those that have acceptances!!!
Here in TX rank is everything, I wish it wasn’t because it really penalizes kids that take non weight classes like orchestra and favors kids that have the opportunity to take high school level foreign language classes in middle school.
Rank was just released today D slipped one spot from 28 to 29 out of 602 - hanging on to top 5% by the skin of her teeth.
My son’s school of 4000 kids does not rank. They have “gold robes” which are awarded to any kid who receives an unweighted 4.0. The rest of the students wear blue robes to graduation so the gold robe really stands out. They are featured during graduation and their bios are read to the crowd. They are seated in the front. You might think that this would be unfair because some kids are taking harder classes than others but that is not how it works out. The kids who were last year’s gold robes were the same ones who took all the APs they could and they still ended up with 4.0s.
Right now there are about 19 out of 1000 seniors in line for a gold robe. We shall see how many are left standing at the end of the year.
As for how this plays out for college admissions? Gold Robes are considered valedictorians by schools that offer awards to top students, and for the UCs, the college system uses a UC GPA which caps at 8 AP or Honors extra points, which is fair. It works well. Kids can take whatever they want without having to jockey for a better position.
Sorry I think 1 is ED (MIT) and 3 EA (Purdue, UVa, GT)? Our HS doesn’t rank so not as GPA obsessed here thankfully.
I totally understand the frustration of the ranking game. I truly didn’t understand it when DS16 was in middle school . I naively thought “Why take HS classes in middle school , there’s plenty of time for that .” He took Algebra 1 H and English1 H in 8th grade , but did not take his foreign language in middle school . He also didn’t take an AP class until his Sophomore year, even though there was one available. He has been playing “catch up” since then. He continues to climb in his rank, but only because he’s loaded with honors and AP classes. He enjoys the challenges of the more rigorous classes, so it works for him. He definitely started out at a disadvantage because we didn’t take the weighted classes early on.
We now have a Freshman who was recommended for a freshman AP World Geography class , but because his writing skills are not advanced, we had to make the responsible decision to choose the honors class over the AP class, knowing that he would also have to “catch up” It’s very hard as a parent to know what to do.
Add into the mix that our state offers fairly significant lottery scholarships that increase if a child is ranked in the top 6% of their class. There truly is a strategy to all if this which makes foramy stressful decisions. Congrats that your daughter only dropped 1 place in her rank. Once they get that high in rank the differences in GPAs are very negligible. Junior year here was a nightmare for quite a few of our students who tried to increase their GPA by taking too many AP classes. One of the smartest students dropped from a straight A student to low B because of it.
@dcplanner MIT does not have ED. Only EA.
Asleep-I was too. I do think colleges have some common sense when it comes to weighted grades, because I’ve read here on CC many times that colleges will strip away the weighted numbers and rank on a 4.0 scale. Perhaps not all, but many. D took an engineering elective last year, quite a leap for a humanities kid, and since she didn’t get straight A’s in it all year, it may well have lowered her GPA. But she found a new interest (3D printing), made new friends, and learned a lot. She (and her dad and I) do not regret the decision at all.
Readingclaygirl-yes, D was to be a junior this fall, but had wanted to do a dual enrollment program in which your freshman year of college is counted as your senior year in HS. A former student at her school did this a few years back. I don’t mean at a local community college. Her principal suggested that she had enough credits to be a senior but needed an extra history and an LA class for 4 years of each (which her school requires). She is doing those online. At her school senior year is calculus with the rest intertwined into a huge senior project covering all core classes, and a language, if the student desires. So D will have credits from her project (which she started over the summer) as well as the typical junior classes.
LKnomad that’s a wonderful system! I’d love for them to something like that here!
Our school calculates both weighted and UW GPAs and shows ranks for both. Being in the top 10% is VERY competitive with < 200 kids in the entire class. It bugs my DS a bit that some that had the “easier” teacher freshman year for the HS class he took in middle school have higher UW ranks. I guess he wants “degree of teacher difficulty points” and “attempted with less maturity points” as well as the 1.0 bump that an honors course gets.
I do think it is hard to know when your child is both intellectually and socially mature enough to take an accelerated class. It certainly was NOT cool for a boy to do well in Honors English when he took it in middle school but by freshman year it was not such a bad thing.
Our suburban Chicago high school (and district) no longer ranks… Don’t know if there’s an “unofficial” ranking or not…
My school ranks but doesn’t weight GPA’s. In fact it’s all done out of 100 not 4.0.
Our school don’t calculate GPA. No class rank or docile. Sometimes it is vague where my DD is. I believe each college has their own way of calculating GPA and does not bother how each HS calculate GPA.
I too did not understand the ranking game. I wished in 6th grade orientation they would have told us how important it was for kids to start foreign language. I was one of the very few (I did not know the other parents were picking foreign language in 6th). Now my kiddo is in 7th grade and taking Spanish 1A while many of the other 7th graders are in Spanish 1B. They will be taking Spanish II in 8th grade. My kid will start high school with one year and they will have 2. Plus they reach weighted Spanish before my kiddo. I feel my lack of knowledge in time really has hurt my child.
Also in Texas here.
Weighted GPAs is a new thing to me. I can see the logic, since it helps students who take difficult classes. Our S16 could benefit, since he’s taken all honors and AP classes. As a result, his UW 3.3 becomes a weighted 4.0. If Temple (his first choice) weights the same way he gets a full tuition scholarship. Of course that isn’t guaranteed. Anyway, if he makes NMSF he would get a great package from Ole Miss. This year’s GPA should be ok, since 3.5 of his classes will be math. He’s also taking a “books into film” class that is right up his alley.
@LKnomad, as per UC website UC caps 8 semesters of AP/Honors classes (in 10th & 11th grades) for Weighted GPA calculation and that too max of 4 semesters in 10th grade.
I don’t know where but I have read in some blogs that UCLA and UCB don’t cap at 8 semesters and I did ask about this in UCSD admissions office last month and they (kind of) confirmed it by saying that even within UCs Weighted GPA is calculated differently. Does any of the parents familiar with UC system know that it is true or not ?
Temple is one of D’s choice schools. It doesn’t appear to weight grades, but says “college prep” level classes and for the merit scholarships, uses core classes only.
I contacted Temple and was told they do weight academic classes. Doesn’t mean his GPA will be weighted high enough for full tuition, but it does give some hope.
@indsfolax that is correct. As far as I know UCB and UCLA do not cap at 8 semesters. Also for the rest of UCs they use caped GPA as eligibility criteria of minimum GPA of 3.0 or whatever minimum UC GPA is.
@indsfolax my son had been told that a UC GPA is a UC GPA no matter what the school. I believe that things like the ELC (eligibility in the local context) is a system wide eligibility and they use a UC GPA to calculate. Since all UCs use the same app and receive the same info I am not sure how they would recalculate an individual’s GPA unless they had a computerized system that recalculated tens of thousands of apps.
OK I looked this up. This is what I found
“Academic GPA (calculated using A-G courses taken from the summer after 9th grade to the summer after 11th grade with AP/IB/UC-approved Honors/community college courses carrying an extra grade point; for the purpose of admission evaluation, UCLA looks at unweighted and fully weighted GPA - no GPA cap)”
My S16 will get a rank for college application purposes but as far as I know we’ve had no access to it before senior year so it isn’t a basis of ongoing competition among students. We never find out the valedictorian. I can’t remember if it takes into account weighting or not, but it might be unweighted such that some kids avoid AP to protect their GPA. I guess there is freedom in having already blown the top X% so my S16 is free to take classes that interest him. Every year he wants to take more AP than we want him to. I’m proud he really does value the learning, still frustrated he can’t/won’t master the work ethic.