@carolinamom2boys yes please!!! Thank you!
Totally forgot to select the school score reports from June. Argh, age.
@cakeisgreat One college that D19 and I loved was Berry College in Georgia. Amazing setting and friendly campus, liked their language and science programs. Might be more of a mid 3 GPA, although I recall the rep said there was a wide range.
Oh, indeed. I could have sent free score reports to a few likely schools on the list.
DSās keyboard tapping sound (videogame) was so annoying ~X( that I signed him up for the August SAT subject test. >:)
I will remember to send some free reports then. :-B
@jellybean5 http://www.friscoisd.org/docs/default-source/resources-information/guide_2017.pdf here is a link to a table on how our Texas school district figures out weighted GPA. (table is on page 7 of pdf)
@dfbdfb I guess Iām looking to make the weighted percentage grade into a 4.something. Something more precise than A=4, etc. Anything?
@Boilermom, so it looks like your UW is on a 5 point scale. Amazing how different your system is.
Our school system weights +2 for AP or dual enrollment or IB or Gifted and Talented magnet program, +1 for honors. So in theory itās possible to get a 6 weighted. In practice, languages and PE donāt have weighted versions and you have to take PE within the school system and youāll eventually run out of AP courses. So the practical maximum is probably somewhere around 5.9. Which still sounds ridiculous to me, but there you have it.
Our school doesnāt provide an unweighted GPA, only the weighted. It is mind boggling to me how difficult it is to figure out chances at various schools, when you donāt know what formula they are using. On top of that, the differences in grading from school to school is a real kicker, too. I guess they can tell from the overall grades from a particular high school if they are over inflated or not? My son goes to a public high school in the Chicago suburbs. The school is mostly low income and minority students, many ESL students. The districtās gifted academy is housed at that school, so there will be wildly different types of students from a single high school. Even within the gifted academy there are differences. Some kids take AP Calc AB as juniors, some AP Calc BC, and some choose to take AP Stats junior year to leave Calculus for senior year. AP Calc BC was a killer of GPAs this year, as the teacher decided to make semester 2 extra tough by not giving any partial credit at all on tests. A single mistake in notation or a minor error made the entire equation wrong. A lot of kids who had As or Bs first semester got Cs and Ds the second. My son got the very first C of his life in AP Calc BC.
It doesnāt make much of a mathematical difference in his GPA, heās still 3.7 UW, 4.3W (based on how our school does it). Heās a bit freaked out that his chances are ruined now. He thinks he did very well on the AP exam, though.
I keep telling him not to worry - he got straight As in the rest of his classes, including AP Chemistry, AP Language and Comp, AP European history, and a PLTW Bioengineering class (plus a Computer programming class). Freaking out over a C seems silly to me, especially if he scores a 4 or a 5 on the AP exam. Heās got a 34 ACT, and I keep telling him itās all good.
@dfbdfb @ninakatarina my bad for not being more specific. He likes michigan mostly because he has a lot of family there. Three of his cousins went. But generally he prefers mid-sized schools with ~5000-8000 undergrads. He likes east coast the best, and then midwest. He wants to study political science or economics.
@Boilermom thanks for your Texas school explanation, our district gives us the multiplier to use, but hereās ours: https://www.neisd.net/site/Default.aspx?PageID=946
But that info doesnāt include how to figure out what your weighted GPA is on a 4 or 5 point scale, whatever that might be. What I think is kind of crazy is how hard the AP classes, etc. are and yet when I look at what college applications are asking what your unweighted GPA is based on a 4.0 scale, they arenāt taking into account the AP or dual credit courses, etc. My D took 4 AP classes, and got 4 As and 2 Bs and one regular class, so sheās going to have a GPA over 4.0. So confused 8-}
@jellybean5 i donāt think itās an exact science. I think they look at UW GPA and then look at the classes to determine rigor. The guidance counselors also have to check a box on their recommendations that indicates level of rigor (most rigorous, rigorous, etc). Schools can also look at rank or percentiles to see where the student fits within their high school. Can you estimate where your D falls in her class? That might help you figure out if a school is a reach/match.
All of this is for schools with holistic admissions. I think there are schools out there that use a GPA number that they formulate to compare students. If youāre looking at schools that do that, maybe your counselor could help you with weighted GPA ā¦or even perhaps the college could explain if you gave them a call. Remind me why you feel like you need a weighted GPA? I mean, we have one for S19 but Iām not sure it means a whole lot. I also focus on his UW GPA and know that heās got the highest rigor available. I also have info that shows he is in the top decile of the class for both weighted and unweighted. Our school doesnāt rank and they only show decile. He could be in top five percent by thereās no way for us to get that info.
Does anyone know when colleges that post their merit award info on their websites typically update their webpages? The schools that I have looked at still have info for the class of 2018.
I agree with @homerdog. I stopped caring much about D19ās weighted GPA once we really started to dig into the college process last fall, because the numbers for everyone are so big and it doesnāt give you as much insight into what the actual grades really are. So I just hand-calculate an unweighted GPA on a 4.0 scale for D19 and then figure that yes, schools are also looking at the transcript itself to note actual courses, trends, etc. There are just too many ways to calculate weighted GPAs otherwise. And here in California, our UC system has its own novel way of calculating it that doesnāt include any freshman or senior year grades and weights honors classes the same as AP classes, but only up to 8 semesters total. So D19 has three GPAs: unweighted, weighted, and the UC GPA.
@elodyCOH I do think schools look at a studentās body of work and course selection, and have to appreciate that some teachers will just be tough or circumstances otherwise unfavorable. If your son has strong grades overall and strong grades the same term as the C, it is what it is and life goes on. D19 had a difficult APEL teacher her second trimester this year who herself admitted to having gotten only a 2 on the APEL test as a student, and is still quite young, and just graded essays like a fiend. It was especially annoying because the other APEL teacher is far easier. D19 was back with the easier teacher in the third trimester and ended with a 96, whereas sheād had an 86 with the hard teacher.
We had the best time at Disneyland. Not sure if they have this at the Florida resort too, but at Disneyland you can now pay $10 extra to get a āMax Passā which allows you to use an app to get Fast Passes (far shorter lines, timed entry). Using that system, D19 went on 23 rides for the day, which is double the average. It was great and I think getting the Max Pass and the app is now a no-brainer ā just some travel adviceā¦
Went to a college graduation party yesterday for the ring bearer from my wedding! Aww. Heās adorable! D19 has gotten the āwhat colleges are you looking at?ā question four times in the last week. Not surprisingly, it came up again at this party. She kind of hems and haws her way through the question every time. Sheāll tell me her front runner schools but they are so selective that sheās too embarrassed to say those, so she just deflects and gives a sooooper vague response. Someone also asked what she wants to major in and she said āSpanish,ā which was a bit of a surprise. I do think itās revealing to see what answers your kid gives to other peopleā¦
Goals for this week: The Spreadsheet research, and one mock interview. Plus packing to go to DC on Saturday. I feel like thatās a realistic modest set of goals for Week 1. Iām a little jealous of her week in DC. My DH works out there in the DC/Baltimore area 25% of the time so heās taking her and heading to his office, which is pretty convenient. Iām hoping D19 will give more consideration to a DC/Baltimore school after this, which is an obvious location she should consider but for some strange reason she hasnāt really focused there in her head. But with her dad often nearby, the easy direct flights, relatively mild climate, the urban excitement, I think sheād love that greater metro area. Weāll seeā¦
D19 got an email from Emory that their supplemental questions for this fall are out. Just FYI if anyone is an Emory person and yet didnāt get that heads-up yet.
In WDW you donāt have to pay extra for the app to make any FP. I didnāt know DL was charging extra for that! Good to know if we ever went out there.
Guidance counselor has screwed up the fall schedule. Again. Why should this year be different from any other year?
On the plus side, the GC canāt say that she doesnāt know my child.
The GC is nothing of not consistent though, right @ninakatarina ?
This GC KNOWS that my child is taking dual enrollment classes at the community college this summer. She told us who to talk to over there. She signed the forms. She talked it up to other kids as a viable method of skipping in-school health and economics classes.
But she plunked DS into standard level health and econ, not even honors. And standard level physics. Standard level classes at our school drive my kid crazy. The kids donāt want to be there, the teachers see themselves as glorified babysitters, theyāre lucky to get a single day of actual teaching per week.
@homerdog I was merely curious about the GPA since the kid worked so hard this past year. HS is going to have the kidsā temporary ranking available on 6/20 so they know where they stand for college apps this summer. That ranking will be good through the fall when the ārealā rankings are released after the first 9 week grading period. D says she feels like she did well on the 6/2 SAT, which would be great. That info isnāt out until 7/11, so we wait for that. Also AP results arenāt available until 7/8.
AP results on 7/8? Isnāt that a Sunday? I thought they were coming later in the week.
the 8th is correct. The final day is the 9th