There seems to be an assumption that weighting is the only determinant of rigor. This is simply not true across the board, since some schools limit the number and/or school years students can take AP classes, and some do not weight honors classes. I like to believe that admission committees look at the whole transcript with the rest of an application and make their own determination as to the relative rigor of the student’s program. Like the OP, my daughter graduated third in her class. For her entire senior year she took three career tech classes (unweighted) so that she could do an internship for high school credit at a graduate university and did a very rigorous independent research project under the guidance of a PI. She knew that she was giving up rank to do this, but the learning opportunity was amazing and she ended up earning a very competitive merit scholarship in the end.
Gaming the system is a choice, as is pursuing other opportunities that have rank cost, but have other value to the individual. It all depends on what the student values most and how that helps them reach their goals.
“Gaming the system is a choice, as is pursuing other opportunities that have rank cost, but have other value to the individual. It all depends on what the student values most and how that helps them reach their goals”
I agree totally with above statement, but maybe its not really gaming the system since that implies an unscrupulous action. When in reality your simply taking the classes that earn the most weight in your GPA. My schools did not weight honors or duel-enrollment since there was no standardization as to rigor in those classes. I guess AP classes have a certain known rigor due to the national standardization.
My sil still is still bitter that she graduated number two in the class because she took 7 classes + orchestra and number one took 7 classes and no orchestra. She knows it’s silly - she attended Harvard.
In this situation, I’d have had a talk with the GC and be nice a apologetic, “I’m probably overthinking this, and being overly paranoid, but could you put something in your recommendation like, ‘Student x’s rank was adversely affected by taking extra elective courses.’ Thanks.” They may not even realize that their system makes no sense, and it may be incentive for them to change it for future classes.
Luckily it’s pretty rare that these little unfairnesses actually make a difference in admissions or scholarship decisions.
Seems like there’s disagreement on what “gaming” means. Here’s my attempt at a definition -
Some actions might be 100% gaming while some might only be partial gaming (depending on the intent). I certainly wouldn’t call taking AP US History instead of regular US history gaming. That’s just taking a harder class. Here are a few examples of what I might call gaming -
[ul]
[]Taking a lighter-than-normal course load to avoid taking an unweighted class
[]Taking super-easy online AP classes that you aren’t interested in to get extra GPA points.
[li]Skipping lunch to drive 30 minutes to a neighboring school in order to take the state required (and super-easy) Constitution class just because that school has an honors version (that’s just as super-easy).[/li][/ul]
I don’t know if I’d call taking some high school courses in middle school so that you could take AP classes sooner “gaming”. Depends if the intent was to take advantage of the acceleration to keep on taking more rigorous courses or if you just replaced the freed up slots with study halls.
Some GPA systems might be more resistant to gaming than others, but I’m sure any system can be gamed.
Regardless, my bottom line is what’s been said before - obsessing over an extra .01 GPA points is usually silly and a waste of time. Thirty years later, I don’t have the foggiest idea who was the valedictorian of my high school class; however, I generally remember who the “smart kids” were, who later won a Rhodes scholarship, etc. Personally, I think it’s almost always counterproductive to bother explaining why you’re ranked #4 instead of #1 on a college application or to have the GC do it - it seems petty, mostly nobody really cares, and if you’re the real deal then your transcript will speak for itself anyway.
However, if someone needs to “game” a bit because they really need a certain class rank / GPA for a scholarship or to get admitted to their flagship, I’d say that sometimes “you gotta do what you gotta do”.
What’s ironic is that no college (that I’m aware of) computes a weighted GPA, but somehow the world keeps on turning. And in college there are all kinds of courses ranging from guts to advanced graduate classes.
The biggest takeaway for me in this process last year was that AOs know how to read a transcript, read essays closely, read LORs carefully, etc. I don’t know how it works at large schools that do admissions “by the numbers,” but at schools with holistic admissions, IME they seem to get it right nearly every time. I’m not sure that DS was even in the top 20% of his class according to his GPA (tbh it never came up), but I have no doubt that the GC and teacher recommendations were extraordinary and placed him among the top students. He will be among the upperclassmen welcoming OP’s son to Yale.
@2017girl Congratulations on your class rank, high grades, and resulting scholarship. You took the approach that gave you the best benefit and have done well. I did not imply that you did anything untoward. Nor do I believe that the two students who graduated ahead of my daughter did anything wrong. They moved in as juniors with weighted grades while students who had been at the school since freshman couldn’t have take any until juniors. We live where there is a lot of student moving in and out of the school, and the top ranked students are usually kids who have moved in. It is what it is. Today’s college admissions environment is a competitive one, and there are many different ways that kids try to show they are worthy of admission.
Your a better person than me. I would have been crazy if someone moved ahead of me by moving into the district with weighted grades I could not get. But don’t you worry the school I graduated from striped my weighted grades from my freshman year, because that would have been unfair to the local kids who did not have the opportunity to take AP classes there freshman year (like your daughter). That in my opinion is what they should have done in your daughters case. She should not be penalized for somthing she could not control.
"I don’t know if I’d call taking some high school courses in middle school so that you could take AP classes sooner “gaming”. That is not gaming. That is seeking more challenge, trying to get out of the mindless middle school classes and get started on high school. It only becomes gaming when the middle school counselors (in private schools, for students entering public high school) advise their students to have those courses suppressed from their high school transcript so that their high school GPA will be higher. I learned recently that this has happened in our area.
Gaming the system is not cheating, nor does it necessarily mean doing anything unethical or unscrupulous. But it may mean doing something that is contrary to the stated goals of how the system is set up. The example in this thread is refusing to take an additional unweighted elective course (having an empty period in its place) in order to avoid bringing down the weighted GPA that is used in the class ranking system at the high school. I.e. the student gets a higher weighted GPA and better rank by taking a less rigorous schedule.
So, this is something that has flummoxed me for some time. My kid’s school has IMO the most fair system. First of all-their grades are numerical. (Which I think all schools and colleges should use). At the end of the first semester of senior year, their grades are recalculated where the average of all classes (excluding PE) is taken and them additional points are added to their overall GPA in this way
Computation of Averages
Computation of ranking averages will be as follows:
a. For full year and BOCES courses, the final average is multiplied by the number of credits. b. For semester courses, the final average is multiplied by .5.
c. For mid-year grading, the average of the first two marking periods is multiplied by .5.
d. The final average times credit total is divided by the total number of credits including one half
of the anticipated credits as of mid-senior year.
The following weighting values will be added to the students' overall GPA for Advanced Placement courses when ranking is calculated and as long as the student takes the associated AP exam at the end of the course.
a. 1.0 for each final average between 95 and 100;
b. .8 for each final average between 90 and 94; c. .6 for each final average between 85 and 89; d. .4 for each final average between 80 and 84;
e. .2 for each final average between 75 and 79; and f. .1 for each final average between 65 and 74.
My question is this, if music is only 1 credit and most classes are 3, does music dilute the final GPA in this case? I’m thinking no, but I’m not sure…I’d have to pull out a calculator…
@fashionella, whether it’s fair or not, at least the kids will realize that math is important in life :))
Tbh, it made my eyeballs roll around in my head trying to figure out whether I thought it was fair. I’ve always taught my children that what they know belongs to them, and whether they get acknowledgment in terms of official recognition is less important than what they learned, and especially the meta-learning. My kids have not suffered for not being #1 in the official tally – sometimes they get miffed at those who cut in line, but I tell them to get used to it, there will be many more in life that are like that. Would you trade lives with the val? No? Then, stay the course.
"Out of the gate in HS, my son never have had an opportunity to be valedictorian. Even with straight A’s, the fact that he took several UW classes his freshman year already put him behind with a class rank of 20 out of 600. Having finished HS with straight A’s in HS (of which 3 were A-'s), he ended up graduating ranked 16th. These results didn’t hurt him in the admissions process either.
My daughter starts HS this year. If she chooses to take drama all four years and doesn’t get any weighted credit, so what? I firmly believe that the pursuing the arts is just as critical for intellectual and personal development as any AP class offered in HS."
Boy, I could have written this post almost word-for-word, except I have two daughters. I figured out about half-way through my older daughter’s high school career that she would never break the top 10, even though she she received all A’s, because other students (and I really think parents) were gaming the system as described in this thread. Daughter #2 is a sophomore who participates in music courses, so she will also surely be hurt by that, but I don’t care and neither does she. I want my kids to take classes they enjoy, and not spend all of their high school years packaging themselves for the next four years. It’s such a waste of a formative time of their lives.
There are electives and then there are Electives. How do you quantify the effort it takes to succeed at Academic Decathlon (or any other demanding elective, i.e. Marching Band with numerous competitions, many hours away)? In our school this is an unweighted class and requires a lot of effort, a lot of reading, a lot of studying, with a new theme each year set by the USAD (usad.org/Footer-Menu/Other/2015_2016Curriculum.aspx). Some states have very competitive programs and some states don’t, so you end the year with many medals, or none? Or in other words, you have something that ‘proves’ your efforts to colleges, or you don’t (on the don’t side you may have earned scores that would have given you a medal in another state, and medals alone don’t indicate effort).
Ideally, we want our kids to pursue education that excites and interests them. In practice, the choice to take Academic Decathlon instead of some other course, perhaps an AP course that might juice their GPA, can possibly affect award money or acceptances to a college.
We told our kids to have fun with AcaDeca, learn some new things, do your best and then hoped the chips would fall favorably.
PS - There is no way to know if XYZ college admissions counselor is knowledgeable about Academic Decathlon or thinks that it is a fluff elective, and yes, you can list awards on the ComApp but it is limited.
Someone is going to get screwed over by any GPA system. My brother (HS class of 2004) and I (class of 2006) went to the same (extremely large, competitive) HS in Texas, where rank really mattered, thanks to the top 10% (now top 7%) law. When my brother went there, everything was done by unweighted GPA, and parents and students complained endlessly about AP and honors classes being “punished.” When I went there, everything was done by weighted GPA, and students and parents complained endlessly about athletes (who were required to get unweighted credit for their sport every year), band, choir, art, and orchestra (ditto), and languages without an AP equivalent being “punished.” You can’t please anyone. FWIW, though, I think the weighted system generally did a better job of representing the “top” kids in the rankings.
Games are everywhere. They are part of everyday life, but you have the choice each time to play or not to play. If you choose not to play, I don’t see how you can be bitter about someone who did.
My son’s HS does a very interesting thing at the end of senior year. The teachers nominate the top 10 kids of the school who are not in the top ten academically. The school newspaper then does a write up on each of the 10 kids who are nominated and selected by all the teachers in the school. The year my son graduated, out of the top ten kids selected, one went to Yale and another went to Harvard.
These games are just that - games. The best schools may limit severely AP classes that kids can take. In D’s school the most that anybody could take was total of 6 - 3 in junior year and 3 in senior year. No weighted grades were assigned either. Do you really believe that graduates of such schools are at disadvantage? Not at all. It is pretty clear for adcoms who “played the system” and who simply took the most rigorous classes and got the highest grades in every single class that they ever took and had tons of ECs at the same time. I am not talking about stupid clubs, I am talking about real things that took hours every day of the week. So, the kid can play the games as much as he wants with both academics and ECs, at the end, he is not the one to win, not from my observation. And that is true everywhere, including the highest education, including Med. Schools…games will continue…but the players are NOT ultimate winners, not at all…everybody is aware who is doing what…nobody is stupid…not adcoms, not others who make selections at the highest positions…
I’m glad I posted this. I’ve learned so much. I appreciated hearing all the ways other schools try to address this issue as fairly as possible. And I can see that there must be no perfect system out there or we’d all be using it.
As to the real question in my OP, how does a student show that they are exceptional in a college app. when the class rank doesn’t back it up in a tangible way, in your comments I found the true gems. Over and over I saw that adcoms at the top schools are to be trusted with the files of our dear, hardworking artistic, athletic, well-rounded kids. (And also with the files of the valedictorians with their eyes on the prize.) Adcoms at elite schools are in the business of spotting the exceptional.
I was participating in another thread about EC’s over the weekend when I saw this smart thing from Chris Peterson’s blog “Applying Sideways” :
Applying sideways, as a mantra, means don’t do things because you think they will help you get into MIT (or Harvard, or CalTech, or anywhere). Instead, you should study hard, be nice, and pursue your passion, because then you will have spent high school doing all the rights things, and, as a complete side effect, you’ll be cast in the best light possible for competitive college admissions.
@fashionella, a system like the one at your school which adds a weighting bonus for AP (and/or honors/dual classes) after calculating the GPA is not penalizing students for taking electives. No matter how many electives you take, you are getting the same boost for the AP’s you took, since your bonus is not being divided by the number of credits you earned.
Interesting that they give different weightings depending how well you do in the AP class. Don’t think I’ve seen that version before.
The 1 credit music elective will contribute less to the unweighted GPA than will the usual 3 credit courses, but that’s a different issue. It means that kids cannot significantly pull up a poor academic GPA with (usually) easy A’s in music classes that aren’t considered full classes. Makes sense.
There is no perfect system out there. Our school gives the same boost, +1, for 9th grade honors classes, which really aren’t that hard, as they do for the most demanding AP classes. That’s not really fair. Some schools give a .5 boost for honors and a +1 boost for AP, or +1 for AP only, and there are even more systems out there. It’s interesting there isn’t much agreement on how much boost to give or which courses qualify for a boost, but the consensus on how to incorporate the boosts is good–to use a system which is obviously flawed and is actually a lot easier to make more fair than it is to decide how hard each class is.