@bjkmom that makes sense. None of his schools offfer big NMF packages. In fact, most don’t give anything at all, some give $1000-$2000. Waiting another six weeks won’t be a big deal though. All apps are RD but he just feels like he wants to get them off the table.
Anyone know the answer to the more general question about updating schools with new awards etc?
Our current issue is trying to finalize the list so that the LOR requests can be given to teachers the first week of school. S19 seems to have schools on his mental list that he is somehow unwilling to verbalize. I’ll mention a school that I thought was on the list and I’ll get a “I really don’t like it.”
“Oh, OK. Well where should I send your ACT scores?” crickets
“Here, look at this website - I think you might want to consider applying here.” “I KNOW! It’s already on my list!”
“Oh, Ok. What else is on your list?” crickets
I will also be banging my head against the nearest wall very shortly.
@eh1234 Honestly, I pretty much never know where kids are applying when I write the LOR. They’re not personalized by school-- with a load of 30 kids some years, (one of my friends had 45 letters to write this year) and kids applying to 10-12 schools apiece, the workload would just be unrealistically heavy. Instead, my letters-- and those of everyone I know-- typically include a line about John Doe “who is applying to your school” or something along those lines.
Besides, my letters are due in to guidance by the end of the kids’ Junior year-- long before many kids really know where they’re applying.
@blkmom Our school uses a teacher LOR request form that has a chart with college name, application due date, and method of delivery and these are uniformly submitted to teachers at the beginning of the school year. Your school’s process sounds more efficient!
I’m probably overthinking it, but it’s also important for him to have a final list to make sure he is working on the appropriate audition repertoire.
@homerdog - would your school counselors take a look at the common app? Ours do so and sometimes are able to provide suggestions as to how to optimize the activities suggestion so it looks less like a laundry list and more like an accomplishment list. Could be worth to wait until school starts and your son has a counselor meeting to send it. Most schools will not review an app until everything is completed, so if the recs aren’t it, there really would be no advantage to sending it now, except for the good feeling you would get from having something checked off the (long) list.
@wisteria100 I highly doubt that our GC can do a better job than we can with the activities section. We’ve spent time researching the best way to sue the activities space and I think we’re ok. She’s a bit useless unfortunately. You’re right about the recommendations, transcripts, etc. S19 will have to request transcripts when he gets back and check with the teachers to see how they are coming along with their recs. One said she writes them all over the summer and the other one says he writes his in the fall.
@peachActuary73 If anybody could give me some info on how the unweighted, weighted GPA thing works, I would be thrilled. It doesn’t seem possible to fairly figure out GPA as unweighted when a kid has taken 4 AP classes. My D is working on her apps but I haven’t heard anything about the GPA part yet. Our district in TX weighs AP classes w/ a 1.29 multiplier, pre-AP classes w/ a 1.15 multiplier. And of course these classes are much more rigorous than non-AP classes. Are they supposed to just take the % grade at face value or do they get to add something to it even if they say “what is your unweighted GPA”? This is a part of the application process that I really don’t understand.
@jellybean5 Does the % grade on your transcript include the AP weight? Our county reports the weighted % grade, but sets a 4.0 to be any grade 90% or higher, so that is why no one can actually get a weighted GPA over 4.0.
An AO at UGA has been very transparent about the difficulties of working with school GPA methodologies. They recalculate every applicant GPA. They take the unweighted teacher grade for core classes and non-core AP/IB from every school reporting and then add 1.0 to the GPA calculation for AP/IB. However, if the transcript includes a weighting in the teacher grade, they will not add any weighting.
We are a large county in the very state of UGA and still put the weight in the teacher grade. So, if a student in another county A gets a pure 95 in APUSH, UGA bumps it to a 5.0, in our county, UGA will translate our weighed 105 to a 4.0.
For summer program apps, two schools gave us very consistent methodologies to calculate an unweighted GPA. If the GC can’t provide it, then we will go with that.
@homerdog Regarding your question about awards won after apps are submitted…My S15 won a major award in December of senior year after apps had been submitted. One of the schools on his list had a mandatory February update, and he listed the award then. At the other schools that didn’t have any type of official update requirement, he emailed the admissions offices when he won the award in December.
@jellybean5 I doubt there’s a single answer. High schools figure GPA differently, and colleges refigure GPA according to their own guidelines once they’ve been submitted. D’s high school only ranks by weighted GPA (they call it QPA) and when I asked what her unweighted GPA was the counselor had to calculate it by hand. I wish I knew more about it too.
@homerdog - S19 is in the same spot. If he makes NMSF cut, he will send an email updating admissions. At some schools it really won’t matter but at least it shows he is truly interested in the school if he takes the time to send an update. Good luck to your S19 – over here we are keeping our fingers crossed that Art’s predictions are spot on. S19 has several schools on his list where it will make a big difference for us financially.
@peachActuary73 So now I pulled out the working copy of D’s transcript, which she got in June after school was out. The “ranked GPA” is 105.95, so that includes the weighting I mentioned. How do I convert that into a 4.0 GPA scale?
Isn’t it 4 x 1.0595?
We’ve never kept track of kiddo’s scholastic awards. I know when he’s been on the honor roll, but other than that I have a hazy notion that he was given other academic awards. The school has a yearly scholastic awards banquet, but it’s always been on the same day as a billion other things so we’ve never gone.
So now it’s time to fill out the awards section. I always sort of thought in the back of my mind that the school kept track of these things. But no, it doesn’t. Gulp.
@jellybean5 They use 1.29 or 1.25 as the multiplier? I do agree with @Nicki20. You should be able to multiply by 4. But with a multiplier of 1.29, it does seem to exceed the 5.0 scale.
@jellybean5 We were told that you can convert your letter or percent grades on as follows. An A+(97-100) is a 4.0, an A (93-96) is a 4.0, an A- (90-92) is a 3.7, a B+ (87-89) is a 3.3, a B (83-86) is a 3.0, a B- (80-82) is a 2.7, a C+ (77-79) is a 2.3, a C (73-76) is a 2.0, a C- (70-72) is a 1.7, a D+ (67-69) is a 1.3 and a D (65-66) is a 1.0.
So you would convert the grade for each class, then add them together and divide by the number of classes. Most schools only use semester grades to calculate GPA. ( in other words if you get a report card every 6 weeks like in our district you don’t need to calculate this for each report card, just for semester grades which are at the end of the 3rd 6 weeks)
Since GPA is cumalative you would need to figure out each year and then add them together and divide by 3.
Another suggestion is to ask a counselor at your school. A lot of schools even if they don’t report it already calculate it in order to report it to colleges with your transcript.
Do GPAs have to be converted to be reported on applications?
I believe that S19 just put his weighted GPA on the self-reported grade portion of the Common and Coalition apps. I didn’t look that carefully at the applications, but I think they ask what type of scale your school uses (% out of 100, 4.0, something else), ask for your GPA, and ask whether it’s weighted/unweighted. Whatever he reported is the GPA that will be on his transcript. (Weighted, 4.0 scale).
The only thing he wasn’t sure about was whether the scale is 4.0 or 5.0. A 5.0 is unobtainable as a cumulative weighted GPA, but students do get a 5.0 towards the weighted GPA for an A in an AP class. In reality, the highest GPA I’ve seen on a scattergram is probably more like 4.6 (and that would probably include senior grades).
Dividing by 3 is only accurate if each year you have the same number of academic classes/credits. For instance at some high schools you might take an extra class one year but not the other, so the gpa for the year w/ the extra class counts more. You would need to do a weighted average of the 3 years, or just do a gpa for all years together.
@wisteria100 I don’t think so. You are figuring out the GPA for each year individually then adding them together and dividing by 3 for the 3 years worth of grades. So any number of extra classes taken would be accounted for in the calculation for that years GPA.
Our large high school (with VERY good huge experienced pre-college counselor staff) tells students to put the weighted score on Common App and say it is out of a 4 point scale. So 4.5 on a 4 point scale. Each school that you actually apply to will receive info about how your school weights grades when the transcript is sent.
Some direct college apps (not using Common App) and some Net Price Calculators will not let you post more than a 4 on a 4 point scale, so you have to use unweighted.