I don’t understand how the issue of increasing the denominator leads to decreasing GPA lets them compare applicants at the same school.
My younger kid’s high school has students who take 4 a-g classes in a year, and students who take 8. Assuming they take the same AP’s (because we’re out of state at a school without IB or DE, so APs are the only weighted grades) the kids who take 4 will have much higher capped GPA.
As I said, I understand how capping the GPA so that kids who have the option of 10 AP’s don’t have an advantage over kids whose high school offers 4. I just feel like the obvious way to do that would be to say “the weighted GPA is capped at 0.4 points over the unweighted GPA”. That seems like it would address that, address the concern of rewarding kids for taking extra classes, and not punish kids for, for example, deciding to continue into a third year of foreign language, or choosing music rather than PE as an elective.
The UCs are looking at many factors in admissions, including (but not limited to)
unweighted GPA
capped weighted GPA
uncapped weighted GPA
number of a-g courses total
number of a-g courses in each subject area
etc.
It is not possible to max out all of these factors at the same time.
A student is not punished for taking more classes. The UCs see how many a-g classes were taken (and which ones) and this is a factor in evaluating the student along with their GPA, etc.
For a simplified example of how different factors are balanced, look at the information about the statewide index here: Admissions index instructions | UC Admissions. This simplified index is only used for determining whether students are in the top 9 percent statewide, and doesn’t include all the factors that are used in the comprehensive review, but you can see how GPA and number of a-g courses interact. Students can qualify with a large number of a-g courses and a lower GPA, or a small number of a-g courses and a higher GPA.
I think it is a semester wide count (9-12). For example. if a kid takes 6 periods of a-g, then in four years 48 and with DE/concurrent it can easily reach 70.
"Count every semester of UC-approved A-G coursework completed in 9th-11th grade and in progress or planned for 12th grade. If your school operates on a quarter system, divide the total number of quarter courses by 2 to get a semester count. If your school operates on a trimester system, divide the total number of trimester courses by 1.5 to get your semester total. If your school assigns only one grade for a yearlong course, multiply your yearlong courses by 2 for a semester count. "
This particular table is counting all the a-g course semesters in 9th-12th grades. From the instructions:
Count every semester of UC-approved A-G coursework completed in 9th-11th grade and in progress or planned for 12th grade. If your school operates on a quarter system, divide the total number of quarter courses by 2 to get a semester count. If your school operates on a trimester system, divide the total number of trimester courses by 1.5 to get your semester total. If your school assigns only one grade for a yearlong course, multiply your yearlong courses by 2 for a semester count.
In a typical school with 6 periods of a-g courses, students will be able to take 48 a-g semester courses.
Some schools have lots of periods in the school day. If a school has 8 periods filled with a-g courses, over 8 semesters that adds up to 64 a-g courses. And some students are taking DE courses or summer courses.
I wouldn’t worry too much about the exact number of a-g courses taken; this table is only showing how the statewide index works. Individual UC admission offices may vary in how they calculate these numbers and how much weight they place on the number of courses taken.
The main point here is that even though it’s easy to focus on GPA, the number of a-g courses is also an important factor in how students are evaluated. Students are not penalized for having a lower capped GPA because their high school had more class periods, or because they took additional classes and challenged themselves.
I hope so. It definitely helped to get 9% statewide, even though we didn’t get the ELC from school. Not sure how much of this helps at the end. we will see in a month.
Just capping at 0.4 points over unweighted GPA will have a different affect than current UC capped weighted GPA. In order for students to get max 4.4 capped GPA currently, they have to get all As in a fixed number A to G courses. But using your method, student can get Bs or Cs and still get max 4.4 capped GPA, as long as they take enough AP/honors for the extra points. Basically, UC doesn’t want students to game the system by taking a bunch of APs just for the bonus points.
Yes, capped at 0.4 points over the student’s UW GPA, not over the highest possible UW GPA.
Or to put it another way, you can’t get honors/AP etc . . . credit for more than 40% of your a-g classes. That would yield the same result.
I am realizing that for my kids, this would be less of an issue than that one of my kids goes to a school that doesn’t designate any courses as AP, DE, or IB. So, his GPA would be the same UW, or capped weighted. Luckily, I don’t think we can afford UC OOS anyway.
We were worried about this last year. Our school offers 6 a-g per semester. With all A’s the max UC capped gpa would be 4.33 for 10th/11th. My child took extra college classes outside of school, which took the gpa down a little but increased a-g and presumably increased rigor but as a result did not hit the max gpa for their school. Others at their school who did not do the extra classes had a higher capped gpa. They still got in to the top UC’s so I do believe the UC’s look at the a-g number in relation to the gpa and you are not dinged for taking more classes. Next child will do the same thing.
In our California school district, unlike others nearby, Dual Enrollment (DE) classes aren’t included on students’ transcripts. Many students take community college (CC) courses alongside their regular classes, resembling concurrent enrollment more than traditional DE. This policy appears to vary across different school districts within the same area.
I know few kids who had more than 5 associate degrees by the time they finished their high school.
