@MiamiDAP I totally agree–those kids are losers and it is very sad that their parents are teaching them that beating the system is the only way they think they can succeed.
But those people do exist and we would be naive to think otherwise.
I personally think the goal should to be in the top 10% in the class and also take classes such as music/art/drama that it would be difficult to take at other times in your life. My top 6% girl wanted to take Cooking class…go right ahead. Learn some fun things.But also work hard in AP Calc, AP Psych, AP Bio.
In my experience, the only sort of gaming can be impactful, and gaming is probably not the right word, is when a student has a full schedule of 5 Honors/AP classes, and keeps a PE class and a study hall so they can put all of their energy into striving for an A in each of the 5 difficult courses.
I have seen other students attempt 7 honors/AP courses and I think that is usually a mistake. Especially if they have significant ECs. There is a big risk of failure, and very little upside in doing this.
How do selective colleges then choose between students whose high school weighs gpa and those that don’t? It seems to be a convoluted system overall in light of the comments in this thread.
They either look at the unweighted GPA or reweight according to their parameters. For multiple applicants from the same school, they can use the weighted GPA to rank students even if the school does not.
After all, ranking (and very often GPA) is only useful for comparing students within the same school. It can only be served as one reference point for adcom evaluation.
It’s not the selectivity of a school, it’s more the size of the school and their admissions team. Smaller schools, regardless of caliber, can take the time to look over every application and then re-weight the grades on the transcript. The big publics (regardless of prestige) are the ones that just can’t time to look at every application. Generally the admissions people are very familiar with the area schools and their school profiles will explain their weighting system.
The California publics recalculate GPAs. They do offload much of the data entry work to the applicants by having the applicants self-report high school courses and grades, to be verified later with final transcripts after matriculation.
It’s curious how different the schools are.
In my S’s school freshmen can’t even take any APs or H courses and while those courses are weighted (+1), many kids decide to take those courses mainly on the “difficulty” basis. Everyone knows that APs and Hs require considerably more work and are generally much harder than “regular” courses so the main question is usually “can I handle this load?” rather than “do I want that extra virtual point in my GPA?”. Especially considering that it’s usually way harder to get an A in those courses than to get a 5 on the AP test. The system is quite clearly explained by GCs from the start and kids have no illusions regarding the grades.
I guess colleges know the difference anyway so one cannot really “game” the system.
For most top schools, they will probably care more about course rigor than class rank. Also, if one try to use an easy schedule to boost GPA and class rank, it not only hurt the course rigor for college admission. You missed all the AP classes that you may potentially get credits and accelerate college graduation. In other words, it is a plain stupid idea.
@walkinghome UMich received >50,000 application each year, and yet they do recalculate GPA for each applicant.
I am naïve. I told my kid to take classes that interested them. She has taken every opportunity to take the AP/GT weighted class when possible simply because she did not want to be in a “regular” class with kids who had not ambition. She will graduate with 8 AP classes and several weighted classes like Pre-AP Latin, Pre Calc, etc. She also took band all 4 years. This year her senior year, she decided to take food science a non weighted class instead of an AP science simply because she is interested in food science.
I am hoping that some admissions com sees that she took a rigorous course load AND took some classes simply to explore thing that might interest her, after all isn’t that what learning is all about? If not then she is screwed.
She won’t be graduating in the top 10% of her class, just the top 18%. But she is a well rounded good kid. We are in texas she won’t be going to UT Austin and has not desire to attend any school in the state.
@labegg she is not screwed if all of her courses are not weighted.
@labegg - No, she is not screwed. I think she did things just as she should have. The only thing she may have been “screwed” on is not being as highly ranked as she could have if she had avoided the non-weighted classes. This is what this thread is about…kids “gaming” the system to get a high rank by avoiding non-weighted classes. But, thank goodness, rank isn’t everything.
She’s not screwed even if her courses are weighted. Taking a weighted class lieu of food science would not have moved the GPA needle dramatically. 8 AP courses plus several other weighted classes should be a rigorous enough schedule for her targeted colleges; hopefully, the GC agrees, since s/he has to rate her schedule rigor.