<p>Fairly frequently, I come across information on CC that is wildly inaccurate. Unfortunately, most of the worst information and advice comes in the chance me threads, in which I will never ever post. But it’s still important to correct the gratuitous amount of misinformation that exists in those threads, and so I’m piloting Part One of what will be an ongoing series: “THINGS YOU SHOULDN’T BE WORRIED ABOUT.” </p>
<p>You shouldn’t worry about: </p>
<p>**Naming a program you completed during your high school years simply because you were at another school for that program. **</p>
<p>We know some of you are doing doing summer programs. If you are committed to learning and give up a piece of your summer to pursue knowledge, not acknowledging that commitment just because you weren’t on this campus is kind of insulting - not to mention just plain foolish. I will never judge an applicant based on where they do that program. </p>
<p>Please bear with me as I try this out. I really want to avoid participating in the ‘chance’ me culture because I believe the nitpicking it usually lead to adds to the unfortunate hyper-angst that can surround the college admissions process. If I feel that I’m getting too close to ‘chancing’ people instead of just providing info, I’ll stop. So any feedback that will keep me honest will be appreciated.</p>
<p>I know that this is not exactly related, but it is something that I am (needlessly?) worried about…
Throughout high school I have taken a full load (5 classes a semester) of AP or IB classes, and have gotten nearly all A’s in those courses. However, my interests have taken me outside the honors track, so I have done many non-weighted classes, such as choir and random things like interior design. These 4.0s have significantly lowered my GPA. At the addmissions office, do you recalculate GPA at all to disregard classes like choir and gym? or do you like to see that students take a few classes outside of the traditional core subjects?.. or am I just stressing out too much?</p>
<p>Oh my gosh, relax! Taking classes you like & are interested in is GOOD!!! Life should not be all about how to look good on paper. You have to enjoy yourself once in awhile. While it is good to challenge yourself, you have to remember why you are in school … you should be LEARNING, not simply accumulating things that you think will look good to adcoms. Balance in school and in life will make you a better person. That is what is most important!</p>
<p>that is my philosphy as well, and I have taken tons of classes just because I thought that they would fun/interesting. However, a large percentage of my class does NOT seem to believe in fun, and I am now wondering if I will be penalized for attempting to have an enjoyable life. wow that sounds bitter. anyways, anybody know if my lower gpa will affect admissions if the discrepancy is caused by having non weighted electives?</p>
<p>vballgirl: My D is a sophomore at Tufts. She spent 4 years in choir, taking 2 choirs each year…unweighted. She also took several other classes that were because she was interested in the subject. She was accepted at almost every school she applied and is happy to be at Tufts (where, altho she is an IR major, she has decided to double major in Music…oh! surprise!)
Talk about your interests and passions in your essays, and that you love to learn and that will help explain your class selections.</p>
<p>The grades to which we pay attention are the grades for your ‘solid’ academic courses: Math, Social Studies, Science, English, Language (the order doesn’t matter). </p>
<p>We do see the grades in classes like Caligraphy, Health, or Chorus, but with the exception of classes like AP Music Theory or AP Studio Art, those grades only impact your academic evaluation lightly. Though if something strange is going on with the grades in those courses that will get some attention. Generally, however, you don’t need to be concerned with the effect those lighter courses have on your academic evaluation.</p>
<p>I think I understand where you are coming from, vballgirl. You seem to be concerned that by taking classes you enjoy instead of simply taking classes that would give you more honors/AP weight, you have a comparatively lower GPA than some classmates. You don’t state that you have low grades in those 4.0-only classes, just that they aren’t given extra weight like classes others are taking. In the end, I assume you will have a lower ranking because of your choices, even though the classes didn’t result in low grades. Am I right? Unfortunately, there are schools that will penalize you because of that (one jumps to my mind immediately, but it’s not Tufts!). I don’t think Tufts does that … the adcoms can speak to that, of course.</p>
<p>DanAdmiss - Does Tufts recalculate GPAs and, if so, how? I am reading different methods for different schools. It’s so hard to figure out where you stand. Also, are applications to Engineering read by regional officers or by the engineering department or both?</p>
<p>And what about kids who’ve schooled completely idiosyncratically? My son is applying to Tufts (we’re visiting this weekend! Yea!) but as a long-time homeschooler he’s never given a hoot about “weighted” or AP or any of that sort of thing. He did take AP US Hist. at the local high school (he’s taken a few classes there as a part-time student), but he took it because he wanted a US history class, and APUSH was the only one offered. The fact that it was AP was irrelevant to him. I know we’re freaks, but he has classes from the local high school (which doesn’t offer anything called “honors” and doesn’t weight it’s few APs or anything else), he has classes from the local public univ. and he has done other subjects as independent/home study. I figure it’s not worth worrying about how it looks. Either the fact that he hasn’t followed the typical suburban high achiever path to college will be interesting to a school or it won’t. If it’s not, then it’s not the right school. (Hoping Tufts is open-minded!)</p>
<p>We do not recalculate GPA. Recalculating GPA washes out a lot of the nuance from school to school, and the logic behind recalculating allows for a belief that grades are the same everywhere. And that couldn’t be further from the truth in my opinion. We know that an ‘A’ at one school is different from an ‘A’ at another; some schools grade inflate, others deflate. Recalculation eliminates the contextual approach to academic evaluation that we use; it puts everyone in the same boat academically and assumes that everyone has the same options, the same opportunities, and the same circumstances. But they don’t, so we don’t. </p>
<p>More to the point originally raised, doing academic evaluation that way puts me in a position to know that some of the schools I read have screwy weighting schemes. I know class rank at these particular schools can be deceptive, and that I need to approach the GPAs I’m seeing with a more investigative eye. That, also, is part of the advantage to the way we contextually evaluate academics. </p>
<p>Homeschooling is a totally different, though related, discussion - I’ll hit some of the basics here, but you may wish to consider calling the schools in which your son is interested to get a sense of what sort of information you’ll need to gather. I read some of the more sparely populated states out west, and so I’ve read a few homeschoolers. You’ll notice that a lot of what I’ve just typed above deals with understanding the context and circumstances of an applicant’s education. This is a particularly challenging hurdle for the home-schooled student applying to schools like Tufts. We look to understand challenge of curriculum, subjects covered, and that sort of thing. With homeschooling, there are many more pieces to that puzzle, and we need to have as many of them as possible (while still making things manageable - a 200 page curricular book can be helpful, for instance, but we won’t be able to do anymore than skim something of that size). Also crucial to our understanding is helping us see the reasons behind the decision to homeschool, especially if reasonable public schooling is available nearby. The non-traditional path can be incredibly interesting, but I withhold that judgment until I hear the explanation in the file. </p>
<p>There’s a little more than that, but those are the highlights, and the rest is better explained over the phone.</p>
<p>I’m happy to answer questions, but we’ve moved a little off topic. Create a new thread and that will help others find answers when they come looking.</p>
<p>“Also crucial to our understanding is helping us see the reasons behind the decision to homeschool, especially if reasonable public schooling is available nearby.”</p>
<p>Should admissions officers expect people who choose private school to answer the same question? “Why did you choose private school, especially if reasonable public schooling is available?” Maybe in both cases it’s not a matter of whether the available public school is “reasonable” or not, maybe it’s just that that private school or homeschooling was what the family thought suited them best, no additional information required. No point in holding homeschoolers to a different standard of having to justify their choices. It should be enough to look at what the student has done, what external assesments exist (grades given by schools or colleges), test scores, essays, recommendations. Just the same as any other applicant. Perhaps admissions officers should put their homeschool “grades” aside and look at the rest of the package for validation, that seems fair, but questioning their motives is spurious unless it’s being done to every other family that didn’t use the local public school. This practice seems to suggest homeschoolers are presumed to be some kind of nut-jobs unless they convince the admissions office otherwise. It’s pretty common knowledge that while the vast majority of public schools are “reasonable”, they certainly are often not optimal.</p>
<p>No. The question as posed to homeschooled students has a specific purpose - to help us understand why an applicant forwent the classroom experience. That isn’t a question a student in private school needs to answer. </p>
<p>And I disagree that there isn’t a point to using a different standard with home schoolers. Homeschooled students frequently have extremely different learning environments, and we have to assess academics different as a result. The academic evaluation is a contextual one for all; every applicant has different experiences, opportunities, and expectations. It’s my job to understand those differences and make an academic assessment with that background in mind. That part of the process is the same for all applicants; the difference for a homeschooled student is that understanding all those things can be a great deal more complicated. When trying to understand a home schooled student, having the reasons behind homeschooling has been instructive in allowing me to understand challenge in curriculum. </p>
<p>That has nothing to do with questioning motives. And I apologize if what I wrote allowed you to reach that conclusion.</p>
<p>I understand better why we misunderstood each other now. As a parent of homeschoolers, and as a friend to many other homeschooling families, I haven’t yet met a high-school aged homeschooler who isn’t involved in classroom experiences. Most homeschooled teenagers are very involved with classes at colleges or community colleges, in quite a few states they are even able to take classes at their high schools in a dual-enrollment type arrangement. So I guess that’s where my interpretation of your earlier remarks took a certain turn. I have never known any kids who homeschooled all the way through high school solely at home. I don’t doubt there are some, but I would think they would be a minority of homeschooled applicants and so wouldn’t be the one’s to base a general policy on. But that’s just my experience – although I’ve had a lot of experience with this.</p>
<p>So if you saw a homeschooler with a mix of courses (some at home, some or even most in various school situations) you wouldn’t necessarily wonder about their motives in the same way as a student who’d never studied outside the home? Like I said, every college bound homeschooler I’ve known would fall into that catagory, so perhaps we’re just getting confused with each other about what homeschooling usually looks like these days, especially for older kids.</p>