Sebastian (a lady) Posted September 9, 2015 Share Posted September 9, 2015 One of the counselor forms I'm filling out asks for unweighted gpa, unweighted grading scale (4.0 is already filled in), weighted gpa and weighted grading scale. I have calculated a weighed grading scale based on one extra point for Advanced Placement, college courses and courses designated as honors by an outside provider. But I'm a little stumped on the weighted grading scale. I'm thinking that they want something other than 4.0. But saying it is 5.0 seems silly, because there is no mathematical way to get a 5.0 given the limited courses that I give additional weight to. Or do I make the grading scale match the weighted gpa (something like 4.3) and just let it be one of the idiosyncrasies of homeschooling? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
momofkhm Posted September 9, 2015 Share Posted September 9, 2015 Around here, honors get weighted to a 4.5. AP to 5. College courses to a 6. Honors A= 4.5, B= 3.5, C= 2.5, D=1.5, F=0 AP A=5, B=4, C=3, D=2, F=0 CC A=6, B=5, C=4, D=3, F=0 I only started weighing honors classes when I found out the local public schools do. Some classes I give more than 1 credit to as well. Campbell girl got 1.5 credits for 10th grade English because it was R&S grammar book, Tapestry for lit, vocabulary book, plus an outside writing class. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KarenNC Posted September 9, 2015 Share Posted September 9, 2015 The local public school is in flux. Current high school students get 1 extra point for honors, 2 for AP or DE (so it's a 6 point scale). Freshmen get .5 for honors, 1 for AP/DE (so a 5 point scale). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bettyandbob Posted September 9, 2015 Share Posted September 9, 2015 Our school district adds 1.0 for AP, IB and dual enrollment. They add .5 for honors. They still compare it on the 4.0 scale. Many people have higher than 4.0 because of the weighting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jenny in Florida Posted September 9, 2015 Share Posted September 9, 2015 I followed our local public school district's policy: 5.0 for AP and DE courses, 4.5 for honors. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mom22ns Posted September 9, 2015 Share Posted September 9, 2015 I weighted 5.0 for AP, a course where a CLEP was passed at the end and DE classes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sebastian (a lady) Posted September 9, 2015 Author Share Posted September 9, 2015 So would my system of having an AP course be a 5 make the entire weighted gpa be on a 5.0 scale? Because there would be no way to actually reach 5.0 since not every course has a weighted option. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elise Posted September 9, 2015 Share Posted September 9, 2015 So would my system of having an AP course be a 5 make the entire weighted gpa be on a 5.0 scale? Because there would be no way to actually reach 5.0 since not every course has a weighted option. It's still considered a 4.0 scale even with the weighted values. For instance, a student with all AP classes and straight A's (impossible, I know) would have an official gpa of 5.0 on a 4.0 scale. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wildcat Posted September 9, 2015 Share Posted September 9, 2015 It's still considered a 4.0 scale even with the weighted values. For instance, a student with all AP classes and straight A's (impossible, I know) would have an official gpa of 5.0 on a 4.0 scale. ^^ This. Think of it this way... the "regular" classes are on a 4.0 scale. The students who take honors, AP, and DE classes get "extra credit". So, a 4.70 GPA on a scale of 4.0 is like a test score of 104 out of 100. The scale is the same for everyone but the extra credit allows for a higher score. I hope I explained that OK. It took me a while to wrap my brain around it, too. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sebastian (a lady) Posted September 9, 2015 Author Share Posted September 9, 2015 The higher weighted grade on the 4.0 is how I'd been thinking of it. The way the counselor form was laid out made me think there must be something else to consider. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matryoshka Posted September 10, 2015 Share Posted September 10, 2015 At our ps, remedial (aka "college prep 2") level is out of 3.5 (!), regular (aka "college prep 1") level is out of 4.0, honors is out of 4.5, and AP and DE out of 5.0 . I have a friend in Houston who said there they score honors classes out of 5.0, and AP out of 6.0!! No wonder a lot of colleges unweight GPAs... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
littlemommy Posted September 10, 2015 Share Posted September 10, 2015 Is it necessary to provide both weighted and unweighted GPA on the transcript? Do the college admissions want to see both? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sebastian (a lady) Posted September 10, 2015 Author Share Posted September 10, 2015 Of the colleges ds is applying to, I've had some say gpa doesn't matter because there are too many different schemes to make comparison useful. I've also had schools that recommended weighting because it makes a difference in scholarship competition. I figures that no school was going to add a weighting if I didn't. But it's easy to consider unweighted grades. (I've also seen discussion of schools that only consider grades in particular courses. ) I had room so I have a column for my weighted gpa and a column for unweighted. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sebastian (a lady) Posted September 10, 2015 Author Share Posted September 10, 2015 Is it necessary to provide both weighted and unweighted GPA on the transcript? Do the college admissions want to see both? And to more directly answer your question, the NROTC scholarship counselor form specifically asked for both weighted and unweighted gpa, with a comments section to explain grading and weighting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matryoshka Posted September 10, 2015 Share Posted September 10, 2015 And to more directly answer your question, the NROTC scholarship counselor form specifically asked for both weighted and unweighted gpa, with a comments section to explain grading and weighting. What do you guys think I should do with a 'mixed' transcript, from PS, DE, home classes, outside classes... I started out weighting, but then there were the classes at Sat. School like German IV in 9th grade, and German V with AP test in 10th. Could I list them both as honors? Just the one with the AP test? I didn't think it would be kosher to rank a class without an approved AP syllabus as an AP class, but honors would make sense?? I got so muddled with all of it, I just unweighted everything, including the previously weighted two years of PS. Should I just go back and re-weight everything (and keep an unweighted column??) I think it's mostly the language classes that are confusing - there's also Spanish V with AP. She made a 5 and a 4 on the two language APs. About half her credits jr. year and the majority sr. year are DE. Most of her 9th/10th grade classes at ps were honors. \She's done with APs - she's taken three of them, but all without official AP classes. I'm actually not planning to put the Bio on her transcript as a class at all, and just list the test - she only got a 3, but there is at least one school on her list that will give her credit for that score. She didn't end up doing a ton of labs or do tests for me to grade, and with the middling score I'd rather just not bother figuring out of justifying a grade for a class. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sebastian (a lady) Posted September 10, 2015 Author Share Posted September 10, 2015 What do you guys think I should do with a 'mixed' transcript, from PS, DE, home classes, outside classes... I started out weighting, but then there were the classes at Sat. School like German IV in 9th grade, and German V with AP test in 10th. Could I list them both as honors? Just the one with the AP test? I didn't think it would be kosher to rank a class without an approved AP syllabus as an AP class, but honors would make sense?? I got so muddled with all of it, I just unweighted everything, including the previously weighted two years of PS. Should I just go back and re-weight everything (and keep an unweighted column??) I think it's mostly the language classes that are confusing - there's also Spanish V with AP. She made a 5 and a 4 on the two language APs. About half her credits jr. year and the majority sr. year are DE. Most of her 9th/10th grade classes at ps were honors. Done with APs - she's taken three of them, but all without official AP classes. What I did was determine which courses I thought required a level of work that went above and beyond what was expected of regular high school work or reached levels similar to what would be weighted in a public school. Then I wrote a policy that would cover those courses. I didn't draw a distinction between honors, AP or DE. Any of those received a one point bump. For my middle son, the courses he did through Stanford's SPICE program will also be listed in this category. I have the following explanation in our school profile and something similar on the transcript. Grade points were assigned on a 4.0 scale, with one additional point assigned for honors courses, Advanced Placement courses and college courses. All courses were taught at college prep level and many presented rigorous academic demands, however it is difficult to differentiate honors level within a unique, home designed course. The honors designation, was therefore limited to courses that were labeled as honors or advanced by an outside provider. Advanced Placement curriculum were submitted for a course audit and were certified by College Board as meeting AP standards. Within this structure, I did not weight Latin 1 or 2, but did weight Latin 3 and AP Latin. The last page of my transcript/profile/course description packet is a spreadsheet that shows exactly how gpa was calculated, with the last column explaining the reason why individual courses received extra weighting. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matryoshka Posted September 10, 2015 Share Posted September 10, 2015 I have the following explanation in our school profile and something similar on the transcript. Grade points were assigned on a 4.0 scale, with one additional point assigned for honors courses, Advanced Placement courses and college courses. All courses were taught at college prep level and many presented rigorous academic demands, however it is difficult to differentiate honors level within a unique, home designed course. The honors designation, was therefore limited to courses that were labeled as honors or advanced by an outside provider. Advanced Placement curriculum were submitted for a course audit and were certified by College Board as meeting AP standards. Okay, that is helpful. Unfortunately, the outside language courses are not officially designated honors, but two let to very successful APs, so I can probably also write something that justifies an obviously rigorous German IV class in 9th grade. She also has three other German tests (National German Exam level 4 Gold medal, and two levels of tests given by the German gov't) to back up her proficiency. And she was in the German Honors Society (thanks, Sat. School). I'd only bump a half-point for those, though, as the schools will also get her ps transcript, which will have honors courses based on 4.5, and I don't want to inflate more than they did. Within this structure, I did not weight Latin 1 or 2, but did weight Latin 3 and AP Latin. The last page of my transcript/profile/course description packet is a spreadsheet that shows exactly how gpa was calculated, with the last column explaining the reason why individual courses received extra weighting. Was this just a spreadsheet saying things like 87-89 = B+ = 3.3 and 90-92 = A- = 3.5 , or more detailed? And if so, what other details? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sebastian (a lady) Posted September 10, 2015 Author Share Posted September 10, 2015 Okay, that is helpful. Unfortunately, the outside language courses are not officially designated honors, but two let to very successful APs, so I can probably also write something that justifies an obviously rigorous German IV class in 9th grade. She also has three other German tests (National German Exam level 4 Gold medal, and two levels of tests given by the German gov't) to back up her proficiency. And she was in the German Honors Society (thanks, Sat. School). I'd only bump a half-point for those, though, as the schools will also get her ps transcript, which will have honors courses based on 4.5, and I don't want to inflate more than they did. Was this just a spreadsheet saying things like 87-89 = B+ = 3.3 and 90-92 = A- = 3.5 , or more detailed? And if so, what other details? I have the following columns: course name grade credits (1.0 or 0.5) grade point (unweighted) [just for that class] grade point (weighted) reason for weighting [current senior has things like Advanced Placement, College Course and Taught as Honors by Outside Provider] Courses are arranged by subject, then by year completed. This parallels the transcript entries At the bottom of the table I have totals for credits earned, grade points (weighted), grade points (unweighted), gpa weighted and gpa unweighted. My grading scale is listed on one line under the table. Basically it is a big sheet that shows the math on my gpa calculations. It will be the last of about 10 pages that colleges will get. I don't actually expect anyone to do more than glance at it, but it will be there for the curious. What I figure is that people may well view grades with suspicion. I get that. I view other people's grades with suspicion too on occasion. My kids have pretty good test scores, AP results and DE grades. The rest is to give a general report of what we did at home and to convey that we took academics seriously. What they will make of it in the end is not up to me. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matryoshka Posted September 10, 2015 Share Posted September 10, 2015 If I end up weighting the grades, then I wonder what I should do with the DE courses that are also honors... ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sebastian (a lady) Posted September 11, 2015 Author Share Posted September 11, 2015 If I end up weighting the grades, then I wonder what I should do with the DE courses that are also honors... ;) Well partly ours get a natural boost by the fact that I grant 1 high school credit for each semester of college credit. So there are more credits and they all have an extra weight. You could easily drive yourself crazy with this stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matryoshka Posted September 11, 2015 Share Posted September 11, 2015 Well partly ours get a natural boost by the fact that I grant 1 high school credit for each semester of college credit. So there are more credits and they all have an extra weight. You could easily drive yourself crazy with this stuff. Yeah, I'm doing that too. She's ending up with 8-9 credits a year... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jenny in Florida Posted September 11, 2015 Share Posted September 11, 2015 What do you guys think I should do with a 'mixed' transcript, from PS, DE, home classes, outside classes... I started out weighting, but then there were the classes at Sat. School like German IV in 9th grade, and German V with AP test in 10th. Could I list them both as honors? Just the one with the AP test? I didn't think it would be kosher to rank a class without an approved AP syllabus as an AP class, but honors would make sense?? I got so muddled with all of it, I just unweighted everything, including the previously weighted two years of PS. Should I just go back and re-weight everything (and keep an unweighted column??) I think it's mostly the language classes that are confusing - there's also Spanish V with AP. She made a 5 and a 4 on the two language APs. About half her credits jr. year and the majority sr. year are DE. Most of her 9th/10th grade classes at ps were honors. \She's done with APs - she's taken three of them, but all without official AP classes. I'm actually not planning to put the Bio on her transcript as a class at all, and just list the test - she only got a 3, but there is at least one school on her list that will give her credit for that score. She didn't end up doing a ton of labs or do tests for me to grade, and with the middling score I'd rather just not bother figuring out of justifying a grade for a class. I weighted only courses that my kids took through outside, accredited organizations. I followed the policies of our local public high schools with regard to how honors and AP/DE courses are weighted: an additional 0.5 point for honors and an additional 1.0 point for AP/DE. I would not have given the full point of weighting to a non-official AP class, but might have treated it as "honors." (That is what I did with the two CLEP exams my son took.) I did not make a separate column for weighted grades. I simply added footnotes attached to the course titles of any classes that merited weighting that explained the above policy. I then listed the cumulative GPA unweighted and weighted at the bottom of the single grade column. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swimmermom3 Posted September 13, 2015 Share Posted September 13, 2015 What do you guys think I should do with a 'mixed' transcript, from PS, DE, home classes, outside classes... I started out weighting, but then there were the classes at Sat. School like German IV in 9th grade, and German V with AP test in 10th. Could I list them both as honors? Just the one with the AP test? I didn't think it would be kosher to rank a class without an approved AP syllabus as an AP class, but honors would make sense?? I got so muddled with all of it, I just unweighted everything, including the previously weighted two years of PS. Should I just go back and re-weight everything (and keep an unweighted column??) I think it's mostly the language classes that are confusing - there's also Spanish V with AP. She made a 5 and a 4 on the two language APs. About half her credits jr. year and the majority sr. year are DE. Most of her 9th/10th grade classes at ps were honors. \She's done with APs - she's taken three of them, but all without official AP classes. I'm actually not planning to put the Bio on her transcript as a class at all, and just list the test - she only got a 3, but there is at least one school on her list that will give her credit for that score. She didn't end up doing a ton of labs or do tests for me to grade, and with the middling score I'd rather just not bother figuring out of justifying a grade for a class. Ds has a mixed transcript with about a third of his credits balanced between home study, online providers, and the local high school. I used the same weighting method as the high school, which is an additional point added to the 4.0 system for AP classes. Actually, this is their exact policy: "A full point (1.0) is added to grade points for grades of A, B, C, earned in Advanced Placement courses, International Baccalaureate courses, and a select number of courses approved by the district as matching the rigor of AP or IB courses. Also, college courses which are transferrable to four year colleges are weighted. These courses are listed in the school profile. All courses eligible for weighted credit will appear in boldface on the transcript regardless of the grade received." I have only weighted AP classes, but then Sebastian's post had me wavering. It would be lovely to weight grades for "Honors" and "advanced" courses, but it really starts to split hairs for me. Derek Owens states specifically that his Honors classes are not the same as Advanced Placement, so does it make sense to give his honor classes the same one point boost as AP Statistics? Ds took two Honors Spanish classes from Ray Leven, but they probably won't be on the same level as the AP Spanish class, so again, am I justified in giving the same point value? Now we also have two "advanced" (non-AP) courses. One is the Adv. Research Writing at Lukeion and the other was the Adv. Algebra II class at the high school. The later class was years 3 and 4 of their math sequence squashed into one year, so that probably is on the same playing field as an AP course. Again, for chemistry, I used Dr. Tang's Honors schedule which is more than his usual chemistry class, but obviously less than his AP class. I suppose I could go to half points for honors, but then I feel as though I am just trying way too hard to pad his GPA, so I have decided to return to weighting only classes that are proven with testing, namely AP. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sebastian (a lady) Posted September 14, 2015 Author Share Posted September 14, 2015 Ds has a mixed transcript with about a third of his credits balanced between home study, online providers, and the local high school. I used the same weighting method as the high school, which is an additional point added to the 4.0 system for AP classes. Actually, this is their exact policy: "A full point (1.0) is added to grade points for grades of A, B, C, earned in Advanced Placement courses, International Baccalaureate courses, and a select number of courses approved by the district as matching the rigor of AP or IB courses. Also, college courses which are transferrable to four year colleges are weighted. These courses are listed in the school profile. All courses eligible for weighted credit will appear in boldface on the transcript regardless of the grade received." I have only weighted AP classes, but then Sebastian's post had me wavering. It would be lovely to weight grades for "Honors" and "advanced" courses, but it really starts to split hairs for me. Derek Owens states specifically that his Honors classes are not the same as Advanced Placement, so does it make sense to give his honor classes the same one point boost as AP Statistics? Ds took two Honors Spanish classes from Ray Leven, but they probably won't be on the same level as the AP Spanish class, so again, am I justified in giving the same point value? Now we also have two "advanced" (non-AP) courses. One is the Adv. Research Writing at Lukeion and the other was the Adv. Algebra II class at the high school. The later class was years 3 and 4 of their math sequence squashed into one year, so that probably is on the same playing field as an AP course. Again, for chemistry, I used Dr. Tang's Honors schedule which is more than his usual chemistry class, but obviously less than his AP class. I suppose I could go to half points for honors, but then I feel as though I am just trying way too hard to pad his GPA, so I have decided to return to weighting only classes that are proven with testing, namely AP. I went with a single 1 point bump for several types of classes. I felt that going into more detail the way a school might was a more granular distinction than I could really make. (Remembering that all of my kids will have somewhat unique transcripts and be ranked 1 of 1.) Even though I think that all of Lukeion's courses are amazing, I only gave the bump for Latin 3 and AP Latin. Latin 3 just required an extensive amount of work, certainly more work than I put in to my third year German or French courses in high school. I had courses like Sejong Korean Scholars Programs and Reischauer Scholars Program. They are courses for high schoolers, but there is a competitive application to the program and the reading list and workload looked a lot like an undergrad college course. I think there are a lot of different ways of doing this. The most important thing, I think, is to be clear. Explain what you did and why. Don't have it look like you are only weighting courses with good grades. (In other words, if you said that you were weighting college courses, weight them all, even the course the kid did badly in.) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sebastian (a lady) Posted September 14, 2015 Author Share Posted September 14, 2015 FWIW as an example of variability, I've seen AP US Government taught as a one semester course for a half credit and as a one year course for a full credit. Just depends on the school. But of course the effect on gpa would be different. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sebastian (a lady) Posted September 25, 2015 Author Share Posted September 25, 2015 I love this video. I think this is the same Admissions Counselor that we met when we visited Virginia Tech. Ixnay on the GPA talk! 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FLHomeschool2000 Posted August 2, 2017 Share Posted August 2, 2017 With possible exception for art schools, my daughter is applying to state schools in Florida only. I was NOT going to weight. But after visiting 3 state universities and discovering that all are on the same page regarding weighting, we will weight according to their method. Transcript will show unweighted GPA. Weighted GPA will be 0.5 extra points per honors course and 1.0 extra points per Dual Enrollment. (they include AP and other things, but she only has DE). We have emails out and researching a couple of courses she had to figure out if they would "count" as honors or not. I truly cannot tell at all. So trying to figure that out. We don't wish to unfairly call them that but we don't want to NOT give them that distinction if they are actually are because it matters for scholarship and automatic admission purposes. The only current honors courses are those she took through Florida virtual school that are formally labeled as such by the state. The universities will recalculate these grades with those methods, so I figured there was no harm in anticipating what they will already do. But point blank, each school said they will start with unweighted and re-weight according to the above parameters. So what you actually do on the transcript aside from assigning the appropriate level is rather meaningless. Hope that helps. (we don't know what private schools do as they are not on our radar) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.