My son is in his last exam. We are in a hotel waiting for him to finish. Tomorrow brings some great food, an escape room, and our college’s Yule Log ceremony. Then back home on Sunday. He’s so ready to be done and will get a nice 6 week break.
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On hour 24 of the non-stop drive home from Bama (a long story involving another errand in another state). We are all very fried.
His last final was yesterday morning and he had his grade by Virginia.
Finished with straight As, which is awesome … except, lol, Bama employs a GPA calc with + and - …
His As were mostly A- and so he is ending up with something like a 3.8, which really is frustrating.
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3.8 is still pretty fantastic!
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Not for law school it’s not 
I think it still is and they’ll note the letter, not gpa. And it will be so much more - test, work experience, he’s got a job in Spanish.
He’ll shine with all those things. And it’s still early.
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Yeah, for top law schools (like Harvard, Yale, UVA, UCLA, etc) accepted gpa average is like 3.9+, but the middle 50% is like 3.8 to 3.95, so your son is still in the range, and it’s only the first semester. I’d still celebrate a strong first semester.
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I thought every college employed a GPA system with + and - (with the exception of A+). Surprised to hear that there are colleges and universities that don’t differentiate grade that finely or that there are schools who give all As the same treatment, all Bs, etc.
D20’s and D23’s school(s) both have the following system:
A 4.0
A- 3.667
B+ 3.333
B 3.0
B- 2.667
C+ 2.333
C 2.0
C- 1.667
D 1.0
F 0.0
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Yes, and note that most law schools do count A+ as 4.33 and A- as 3.67 (not 3.7 which is what many college GPAs use for A- grades). So you can have an LSAC GPA above 4.0. Some colleges give A+ grades and some don’t, and some count them in the college GPA (usually as 4.3) and some don’t.
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VT does that as well…
We just got my son’s grades as I was looking at this thread… 3.68 gpa. He’s super excited by that.
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Plans change and LSAC will recalculate GPA anyway. He should just focus on earning the best grades he can right now. A 3.8 is fantastic!
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my D23 is home 
. i think** she likes our state college. She’s in a engineering co-hort program, and they have lined up a fully covered internship for her this summer in Denver. As parents we were hesitant. . . but have not voiced that; she’s very young for her grade. She had some rough times in Calc 2 and Chem 2 this semester; an online calc tutor (ex prof) helped a bit, and she ended up with a stellar overall GPA! she was so so pleased.
(This tutor was amazing; not cheap; but if anyone needs one down the line please PM me. she’ll work with anyone anywhere )
@Gatormama - i think your kid will end up liking the A+ sometime at bama - it’s worth a 4.33!!! it helped boost my s20’s GPA with some easier non-stem classes. my bama S20 is on his way home now. (hint for bama parents from parents FB pages; look at the tiny airport in Meridian MS.; only have United, but parking is $2 a night! )
Enjoy your kiddos, all. These times are so special.
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Thanks for the Meridian tip - that’s worth checking out!
Agreed that the 4.33 boost would come in handy, except he’s double majoring and double minoring and has essentially no room for classes outside them. 90 total credits for the four concentrations and he came in with ~25 credits from APs. I think he might end up with one elective, maybe two if the planets align.
He was ready to drop one of the majors about halfway thru the semester when he realized that every semester was gonna look like this one - but he really is looking forward to so many of the classes for each one and so he is still plowing ahead.
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There’s a ton of great law schools including Pitt (#89) and given his desires, it’s likely great.
And the LSAT will way, perhaps as much, as the GPA.
It’s like a 9th grader worried about Yale now…waaaaaayyyy too early.
He’s on a great path.
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Double major and double minor? Yeah, I think if he keeps up that 3.8 he’ll be fine. There’s a lot of gamesmanship going on with GPA’s to keep those super high GPA’s… I’m pretty sure any decent school will look deeper than the surface level GPA, and weigh a 3.8 GPA with a real heavy workload favorably against a 4.0 with some fluff.
Of course, I have no real idea – haven’t looked at this before, but it seems to make sense to me.
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Thanks, I hope so too! I guess it goes to rigor, and who knows if that even matters after high school?
He says to us when we pick him up, “I’ve never worked so hard in my life as I have this semester.”
He went to a boarding school, so it’s not like he had that homesickness transition, but he did have a sudden realization of complete freedom: that he could go out and party every night and not go to class.
But it also made him realize that freedom also means freedom to fail; that there was no guidance counselor or class dean looking out for him. He saw kids around him drinking every night, never going to class. And he saw others grinding in the library and it really seems to have made an impression on him.
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I agree with @DadBodThor and I do think rigor still counts.
Glad he had such a successful launch to college, hope he gets the RnR necessary to keep this pace going. 
And here for my part I’d thought—but not with any degree of certainty—that most colleges do not use a +/- system. (Source: Talking with other faculty, though definitely nonsystematically.)
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Interesting…I just looked through some of the SLACs D20 and D23 applied to (in addition to their actual schools) and there wasn’t a regional difference (east coast, midwest and west coast) - they all used the +/- system. Some variation as to whether they went with the 3 decimal or 2 decimal place on the +/-.
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That may be the difference, if you’re particularly looking at SLACs. That’s a limited slice of the college marketplace, though.
(FWIW, my D17’s SLAC didn’t use +/- grades.)
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Obviously 3.8 first semester Freshman year is fantastic. If he knows he absolutely wants law school then why not back off of the really demanding schedule he’s made for himself. Take some easy courses that he will make an A or A+. Im sure there are plenty of those at a school as large as Alabama. Rigor really means nothing with regard to law school. They just want top GPA’s to help raise their rankings.
But again what he accomplished in his first semester is truly outstanding.
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