GPA..Honors/AP...hijacked from area code

Just a little anecdote...

My son attended a private school for the first 2 1/2 years of high school -- where EVERY class was difficult -- and was not able to take any honors/AP courses. He was ranked in the top half of his class when he transferred to a large public school, where it seemed that everyone had been taking pre AP/AP/honors courses from the get-go in freshman year and had been the beneficiaries of weight added to their GPA. Overnight, my son's class ranking went from the top half to the bottom quarter. Thankfully, his private school drafted a document giving his ranking midway through his junior year, but if there had been no explanation, his final class ranking would have been WAY misleading.

quote:

Originally posted by nortexbaseball:

At what point do Honors classes become select classes, and premier classes, and so on until nobody knows the difference?

Some schools with more rigorous curriculum, such as Dtiger's Jesuit, do not provide rank to colleges (unless you are in the top 10%). This allows the colleges to evaluate you based on the curriculum, your GPA and your SAT/ACT test scores and not solely on class rank.

I don't know if there are any public schools that are non-ranking but there are many strong public schools with strong AP programs where students would benefit from non-ranking.

Nortex- I see and understand your issue; however, I mentioned how most colleges (I've come across, so by no means does this mean most in the country) view a kid's gpa as "unweighted." When a student applies for clearinghouse, his gpa is considered on an "unweighted" scale. (sidenote: if you take a pass/fail class for the clearinghouse, when they factor it into your gpa, they take the lowest possible passing grade--a "C") So in terms of colleges, gpa's can be seen in the unweighted form, which doesn't give any benefit to an honors/AP class.

I see your point where you do the work in front of you. That is why I put myself through the tough schedule I did--I would never completely know how much easier it would've been if I took regular classes. However, I can see the amount of work friends of mine did in those classes and compare them and I can assure you that I deserved extra credit because it was added stress on my hectic schedule.

I will just mention that Jesuit's "added bonus" for honors/AP classes is not nearly as high most schools. Which is why I think we only had 2 kids over the 101 gpa and I think they might've been the only two with a gpa over 100. I have a hard time going to a graduation and their overall gpa for their validictorian is a 105 or above.

By the way, I'm guessing that the school the student has a 4.8 gpa at, does its grading on a 5.0 scale. Just a guess tho, if not... serious props.

Nortex,

The only argument that I see you have is it needs to be more uniformed. That I totally agree with. I think all high schools should offer AP/Honor classes.
Until that is the case, your suggestion that students who challenge themselves, try to prepare themself for college, take on harder and more time consuming work should not be rewarded more than the student who takes the regular classes, I disagree. There is absolutely nothing wrong with taking basic and regular classes only. It still gets you through high school and into college if that's their desire. But to say a student who makes a "C" in an AP History class should be graded as the same as a student who makes a "C" in a regular history class would be unfair to the AP student.
As Dtiger mentioned, some colleges look at weighted scores and some look at unweighted. It's their decision. Until there is one single way that benefits all students, there will be someone it's unfair to.

As for Dtiger going to a private school and having harder work than a public school, in our case we could not afford a private school and were thankful our high school offered AP/Honor classes because it did prepare him for college.

TGUF - I did not mean to imply that private schools were more difficult than public schools....I believe there are area private schools that have easier curriculums than many public schools as well as many public schools (including some DISD schools) with very demanding college prep curriculum.

I think the best way to go is to perform like TGUF son did...finish at the top of your class then you don't have to worry about class rankings.