GPA, grading scale, and + or -

[Grantmom]

So, I have a question about grading scales, transcripts, and whether or not you account for "+" and "-" in the GPA.  

 

From what I have read so far, I was going on the assumption that you need to state your grading scale on the transcript and whether the GPA is weighted or unweighted.  However, how do you handle it when you have outsourced classes?  If one class considers an A to be from 90-100 and another considers an A to be from 93-100?  Also, I thought an A was an A, but was just reading on a blog about an A- being a 3.7 instead of a 4.0.  So what does that mean?

 

I am confused, and to be honest, feeling a little jaded at this moment about grades.  I feel like part of why we homeschooled from the beginning was to have the freedom to actually learn and to not have to jump through hoops for a grade.  But now that we are taking more and more outsourced classes, I am reminded from my own school years that getting an A is about more than what you learn.    

[EKS]

If the outsourced course is from an accredited school, I'd refer the reader to that school's transcript for the grading scale.  If the course is from another source, and *you* are the one granting the credit, I would simply issue a grade in line with your homeschool grading scale.  I think this practice is better justified if you are going from lower to higher standards, though, rather than the other way around.  

[Sebastian (a lady)]

If the outsourced course is from an accredited school, I'd refer the reader to that school's transcript for the grading scale.  If the course is from another source, and *you* are the one granting the credit, I would simply issue a grade in line with your homeschool grading scale.  I think this practice is better justified if you are going from lower to higher standards, though, rather than the other way around.  

 

This is pretty much what I have done.  I have a section in my school profile that explains grades and weighting.  I specify what catergory of courses were weighted (and gave some specific examples).  I also stated that I accepted grades with + and - as the base grade.

 

My thinking was that a reviewer was already going to view my transcript with some skeptism.  I tried to keep things simple where I could, while also giving my kid a weighted transcript and gpa that paralleled what his ps peers would have (knowing that many colleges unweight gpa or calculate their own gpa using only core courses).  

 

I used a basic 90-100 = A and no plus or minus grades.  

 

I felt that I had the same authority to not use the + and - that a brick and mortar school would in accepting a transfer student or assessing outside work that a student had done and asked the school to accept.

 

I think what you need to avoid is making the reader guess what you have done or making it appear that every break has favored the student (for example, if an A- was converted to an A, but a B+ was rounded up to an A also; or if you weighted a class with an A, but didn't weight what looked like a similar level course that the student earned a C in).

[Grantmom]

Thank you for helping me think this through.  This aspect of it is new to me, so please bear with me if I am not making sense.  Sebastian, you said you stated that you accepted grades with + or - as the base grade, what does that mean?  I honestly had no idea that + and - was even an issue.  I mean, is an A an A?  Or is an A either an A+, an A, or an A-?

 

We haven't had the case yet of having different grading scales, I am just thinking ahead, and reading that blog post got me thinking that I do not have this figured out yet.

[SparklyUnicorn]

No usually it goes A, A-, B+, B, B-, C+, C, C-, D+, D, D-, and F.  Each is weighted differently. 

 

When I was in high school there were A+s as well. 

[Mom22ns]

I didn't use +/- or my kids transcripts. I used a 90-80-70 scale. I didn't explain it on my transcript. No one ever asked. I believe TechWife once posted how her grading scale was listed on her transcripts and I really liked it. If I was going to put it on there, I'd have emulated hers.

 

Ds's University does use +/- grades (although no A+). My University didn't (still doesn't). Dd's CC doesn't. The University where dd will attend next year doesn't. I've always had the impression that most colleges don't use +/-, so I didn't see the need to on my kids transcripts either. 

 

As for outside grades, I'm pretty sure my kids only had A's from outside providers. However, what I would have done, was put the grade exactly as they gave it on the transcript, then used the same 4.0, 3.0, 2.0 scale to calculate GPA that I used for all the other grades (in other words discarded the +/- in the GPA calculation).

[Sebastian (a lady)]

I didn't use +/- or my kids transcripts. I used a 90-80-70 scale. I didn't explain it on my transcript. No one ever asked. I believe TechWife once posted how her grading scale was listed on her transcripts and I really liked it. If I was going to put it on there, I'd have emulated hers.

 

Ds's University does use +/- grades (although no A+). My University didn't (still doesn't). Dd's CC doesn't. The University where dd will attend next year doesn't. I've always had the impression that most colleges don't use +/-, so I didn't see the need to on my kids transcripts either.

 

As for outside grades, I'm pretty sure my kids only had A's from outside providers. However, what I would have done, was put the grade exactly as they gave it on the transcript, then used the same 4.0, 3.0, 2.0 scale to calculate GPA that I used for all the other grades (in other words discarded the +/- in the GPA calculation).

I like how you both showed the outside grade and didn't use it in the gpa calculation.

 

We only have one provider that uses +\- I didnt want to show multiple grading scales on the transcript. So an A- became an A and a B+ became a B.

 

For next kid I may adopt the above method of showing the outside grade intact but still just counting it as an A for gpa.

[DebbS]

I had a column for weighted and unweighted grades on my daughter's transcript. The courses that were weighted as honors were either designated as such from outside sources or had been granted AP status from the College Board. In addition, I included explanations as to why I counted the courses as honors. Several of the universities that she applied to do not use the weighted GPA for admissions, but they do use it for certain internal and external scholarships. I got positive feedback that including both was appreciated.

[Grantmom]

That was what I was aware of, the weighting of the grades for Honors or AP courses, but not + vs -.  So, when you say that you just reported the grade as it was received from the outside provider, do you mean you reported a number grade, or a letter grade?  So, if they reported an A-, then you reported it on the transcript as an A-, but then just calculated the GPA as a straight 90-80-70 scale?

[Grantmom]

Do you report number grades at all on the transcript?

[Tsuga]

This is very interesting because in my experience, the real rooting out in the application and scholarship process is between B+ through A, with no A+ available. So having a 91% be an "A" would have meant that I'd have had a 4.0 in high school for three years straight, going below my senior year. As it stood, though, 89.5 was rounded down and that was a B+, 93.4 was an A-. Not just me, actually, but the top 10 in our tiny class, because many of us were in that 90 - 93.4% grade range in math classes or other particularly challenging classes.

 

I would think that calculating an A- as an A would be disingenuous, particularly if you have a student who has mostly As and A- and a few B+ in math, but A+ is not an grade possibility. In that case you're almost always rounding up. 

 

I wouldn't bring up this somewhat arcane point except that most high school college prep students are very much in that B+ to A range so this is the GPA points that make or break kids for scholarships. Our valedictorian and salutatorian were decided by a 1/100th of a grade point (something like 3.915 to 3.927, obviously I don't remember but I remember it came down to the very last percentages on calculus exams, and no I wasn't in that calculation).

 

This would be less of a consideration for a child whose grades ranged from 80% all the way through 100%, so that the weighting could also bring down some of those B+es to straight B.

[Mom22ns]

 So, if they reported an A-, then you reported it on the transcript as an A-, but then just calculated the GPA as a straight 90-80-70 scale?

 

If they gave an A-, I put that on the transcript. Then I calculated that as a 4.0 in the GPA. I did not convert grades by percentages. Whatever scale the provide used stood for that class. So if they had gotten a 90% from a provider that called that a B+, I would have calculated it as a 3.0.

 

Ds did have a B+ in one DE college class and I did put that on the transcript and calculated it as a 3.0, not a 3.25 or whatever a B+ is. That was as consistent as I could figure out to be.

[Sebastian (a lady)]

My intent is not to be disingenuous. There is not a consistent level of difficulty, grading scale, or letter grade scheme across all of our providers and community colleges.

 

The A- in Latin 3 represented a whole lot more work than the A in German 1. The PreCalc one son took at a CC was far more demanding than the PreCalc his brother took a year later at a different CC. The best I can do is to explain our process and how we handled grades.

 

Homeschooling is a handcrafted, unique experience. Not even my two oldest, who were taught the same material side by side for many years will have the exact same education. They started diverging last year and will have completely different transcripts come the end.

 

I don't find it possible or necessary to make their transcripts identical to a hypothetical high school. I went to two high schools and we have lived in a number of different districts. There is an amazing amount of variety in practices from district to district. One college told us that they don't use gpa at all anymore because it is too variable.

[Grantmom]

So, I think I am still confused.  Do the number grades go on the transcript too?  Anywhere on the college app?  I agree that a 90 is different from a 100.  And of course a 90 in one class is easier than an 80 in another class.  But that is the case with all classes really.  But it does seem like we should be consistent.  Ugh, I don't know how to do that.  If you weigh in the pluses and minuses on some but not others, that doesn't seem right either.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Grantmom]

Also, from the outsourced providers, we have gotten an actual final grade report.  Would I include copies of those in the college app?  Attach them to my transcript?  Or just keep them as a record if asked for them?

 

Also, for year long courses, do you figure the grade over the whole year, or by each semester?

 

Do you give grades for each semester or just one for the entire year?

 

What about grades for classes that we do at home that don't really have a number assigned to them?  We don't assign numbers to things like English papers.

 

 

[DebbS]

To clarify, I did not use percentage grades on the transcript - only letter grades. In the weighted column, the AP and honors courses get 1 more point while the other classes stay the same.

 

Letter Grade   Points  Weighted Points

    A                4.0           5.0

    A-               3.7           4.7

    B+              3.3           4.3

    B                3.0           4.0

 

etc...

 

For the outside courses that were non-accredited, I used the actual grade that was earned in the course as determined by the instructor. Given that instructors I used had either a masters or a phd. in the courses taught and several were college professors,  I thought it was helpful to include biographies along with the course descriptions to verify the honors designations.  I did not include any additional proof of the grade earned.

 

AP designations are given by the college board and I only taught one course that I got AP designation for. I did include the proof of that with the transcript.

,

For the dual-credit courses, I used the actual grade earned in the course.  I did not include the college transcript with mine, but will, at the end of the school year, have this sent to the college that my daughter will be attending so that she will be given college credit.

 

Given that some courses are a full credit and some are a 1/2 credit,  I listed the courses by year but had a line for each semester of the same course. For example Biology - 1st semester, Biology - 2nd semester.  I have a column on the transcript that shows the number of credits for a course. 

 

 

Edited December 13, 2015 by DebbS

[Sebastian (a lady)]

So, I think I am still confused.  Do the number grades go on the transcript too?  Anywhere on the college app?  I agree that a 90 is different from a 100.  And of course a 90 in one class is easier than an 80 in another class.  But that is the case with all classes really.  But it does seem like we should be consistent.  Ugh, I don't know how to do that.  If you weigh in the pluses and minuses on some but not others, that doesn't seem right either.

 

You can only be consistent up to a point.  DS1 took four language courses, three math courses, an English course, and a chemistry course.  DS2 took all of the above, plus a fifth language course and two history courses.  

 

DS1 used four different providers (2 community colleges, an extension high school course presented by a university and a non-accredited homeschool provider).  The community colleges used only letter grades with no +/-.  The extension high school course used only a percentage with no letter grade.  The homeschool provider used letter grades with +/-.  I am not willing to twist my transcript into a pretzel because the provider we used for one course used percentages instead of a letter grade.  I have an equivalence and I used it to list the grade.  

 

The best that I can do, as the counselor at the entity that issues his transcript and course descriptions is to do my best to be equitable in how I accept all of this information into his transcript.  This isn't unlike the process that B&M high schools have to go through when they accept a transfer student.  They have to decide if the course taken at school 1 meets the requirements at school 2.  They have to decide if a course was honors or not.  My ninth grade year was taught on a trimester basis.  My 10th and 11th grade school had semesters.  My 12th grade school had to figure out what credit to give for the courses from these other two schools.  (I'd actually forgotten that 9th grade was on such a different system.)  

 

What I've put on our transcripts is grades and if the course was a full year credit or a half credit.  

 

I have a box where I list credits completed each year, weighted gpa and unweighted gpa. Below that I list the grading scale A=90-100, B=80-89, C=70-79, D=60-69, F=<60.  Honestly the whole question is rather a moot point because I teach to mastery, not to a notional average student.  If that means they are still working through the summer to complete the work, then summer is spent with schoolwork.

 

With the transcript, the school profile, and the course description, colleges had about 12 pages of explanation on what my son had done in high school.  That is more than most B&M school provide.  

[Sebastian (a lady)]

Also, from the outsourced providers, we have gotten an actual final grade report.  Would I include copies of those in the college app?  Attach them to my transcript?  Or just keep them as a record if asked for them?

 

Also, for year long courses, do you figure the grade over the whole year, or by each semester?

 

Do you give grades for each semester or just one for the entire year?

 

What about grades for classes that we do at home that don't really have a number assigned to them?  We don't assign numbers to things like English papers.

 

I kept all of the reports.  I only provided copies of those that came from community colleges, because those were the only ones that were accredited.  We also requested official transcripts from those schools be sent to each college ds applied to.

 

I give grades by year for year long courses and by semester for semester long courses (those are indicated as being .5 credits instead of 1 credit).

 

I did grade papers and tests so I could assign a grade in home based classes.

[Sebastian (a lady)]

So, I think I am still confused.  Do the number grades go on the transcript too?  Anywhere on the college app?  I agree that a 90 is different from a 100.  And of course a 90 in one class is easier than an 80 in another class.  But that is the case with all classes really.  But it does seem like we should be consistent.  Ugh, I don't know how to do that.  If you weigh in the pluses and minuses on some but not others, that doesn't seem right either.

 

Just to clarify.  My policy wasn't that I counted the +/- in selected classes.  I simply didn't count the qualification.  

 

The one school that gave a +/- did also provide a percentage if I remember correctly.  That was within the percentage I used for the base grade.  (In other words, I had 90-100 for an A and their A- was a 92, not an 87.)

[Tsuga]

My intent is not to be disingenuous. There is not a consistent level of difficulty, grading scale, or letter grade scheme across all of our providers and community colleges.

 

The A- in Latin 3 represented a whole lot more work than the A in German 1. The PreCalc one son took at a CC was far more demanding than the PreCalc his brother took a year later at a different CC. The best I can do is to explain our process and how we handled grades.

 

Homeschooling is a handcrafted, unique experience. Not even my two oldest, who were taught the same material side by side for many years will have the exact same education. They started diverging last year and will have completely different transcripts come the end.

 

I don't find it possible or necessary to make their transcripts identical to a hypothetical high school. I went to two high schools and we have lived in a number of different districts. There is an amazing amount of variety in practices from district to district. One college told us that they don't use gpa at all anymore because it is too variable.

 

That's true but most colleges do give a 3.7 or so for an A- and give an A- for something above an 87% and below a 95% depending. It's not like it's this mysterious system.

 

Homeschooling varies and so do public schools but there is an expectation that you're working within a general range and also, that rounding goes up AND down.

 

As you're going to give a GPA then you should attach it reliably to percentage grades and not round everything up. You should only round to the nearest letter if you have an equal chance of rounding up or down.

 

For college-prep students in the mostly-A range, with a few Bs, with six classes, if you have all As and one B, which is a really common thing, you are five times more likely to be rounding up than down. 

 

I would absolutely not take pluses and minuses and round them and then turn that into a number. First move percentages into the GPA and THEN give it a letter grade. Otherwise you are losing information and then adding information in based on a blunt score. That's just not a good policy. You lose information and then assign a number that implies numeric precision. And again, when most students are well into the 3.5 and above range when applying to top colleges, that's a huge advantage because you're almost always rounding up.

 

I would go from percentage to GPA to grade. Not percentage to grade (letter, no + / -) and then back to a GPA. And especially not if you're rounding up an 89.9 to a 90 and then to an A and then turning that into a 4.0!

[Grantmom]

I am confused by this last post.  You calculate GPA from number grades, not letter grades?  I thought an A was an A and worth four points.

[EKS]

So, I think I am still confused.  Do the number grades go on the transcript too?  Anywhere on the college app?  I agree that a 90 is different from a 100.  And of course a 90 in one class is easier than an 80 in another class.  But that is the case with all classes really.  But it does seem like we should be consistent.  Ugh, I don't know how to do that.  If you weigh in the pluses and minuses on some but not others, that doesn't seem right either.

 

On my transcript, I put the grading scale that I used for our home based classes as well as classes at a local private school and Oak Meadow.  It showed that an A=4.0=94-100, and A-=3.7=90-93, etc.  It was just luck that the private school and Oak Meadow used the same grading scale.  If they hadn't, I would have referred the reader to each school's transcripts (which I had sent separately).  The CC where my son took classes used a numerical grading system where 3.9-4.0=A, 3.5-3.8=A-, etc.  I reproduced this conversion chart on my transcript.  I then listed both the letter and the numeric grades for each course (for all courses listed on the transcript).  

[Sebastian (a lady)]

This might help you think things through. http://www.donnayoung.org/forms/help/highsc.htm

 

You will need to decide if you will use a grading scale with +/- grades. You will also want to decide what your cut offs for each grade level are.

 

You may also want to consider if there is value in weighting grades for harder classes. I chose to give an extra quality point for AP, College classes and classes designated as honors by an outside entity. I didn't list my home based classes as honors except for the AP classes I created and had approved by College Board.

[Sebastian (a lady)]

This is another view on homeschool grades and gpa. http://www.hslda.org/highschool/academics.asp#transcripts

My process was to grade individual assignments or tests. I used those to figure out an overall percentage. I rounded up or down to the nearest whole number. I used my grading scale to translate the percentage to a letter grade. I calculated gpa based on the quality point for the grade and the credits for the class. I calculated a second, weighted gpa with weighting for AP and college classes.

 

ETA:  Drat, I just realized that several of the links at the page above require HSLDA membership.  It may still be helpful to glance through the sample transcripts to get some ideas.  I started with one of the samples and just kept tweaking until I got something I liked.  I took out some of the contact information like phone and email, since that would be on hand via the actual application (and for us, changes every couple years anyway).

 

I did the transcript by subject with an extra column indicating the year it was completed.  I included one table with an annual summation of credits earned and weighted/unweighted gpa.  This table has a total credits and cumm gpa at the bottom.  On the other side, I have a second table in which I have a listing of the college entrance exams and AP exam scores to date.  The schools also need to get official score reports, but this puts things all in one place (and IMHO also helped to substantiate the grades listed above.  If I list an A for AP Comparative Government and the kid has a 4 or a 5 AP exam score, then there is a correspondence if information).

 

Instead of a big box for grading scale, I just list the scale in one line under the table with credits/gpa.  

 

There are a lot of ways of creating a transcript that gives the info you want to provide.  I wanted ours to be clear, but also pretty clean and a document that would make sense years from now when the student is using it for something else.  I did most of my explanations in a narrative form, either in course descriptions or in the school profile document I provided.

 

I hope you're getting info that helps you figure out what you need.  Keep asking questions.  Many here have also had the same questions over the years.  

 

Edited December 13, 2015 by Sebastian (a lady)

[Sebastian (a lady)]

So, I have a question about grading scales, transcripts, and whether or not you account for "+" and "-" in the GPA.  

 

From what I have read so far, I was going on the assumption that you need to state your grading scale on the transcript and whether the GPA is weighted or unweighted.  However, how do you handle it when you have outsourced classes?  If one class considers an A to be from 90-100 and another considers an A to be from 93-100?  Also, I thought an A was an A, but was just reading on a blog about an A- being a 3.7 instead of a 4.0.  So what does that mean?

 

I am confused, and to be honest, feeling a little jaded at this moment about grades.  I feel like part of why we homeschooled from the beginning was to have the freedom to actually learn and to not have to jump through hoops for a grade.  But now that we are taking more and more outsourced classes, I am reminded from my own school years that getting an A is about more than what you learn.    

 

If you haven't seen the thread that LoriD put together at the top of the high school board, you may find some good info there too.  

 

 

http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/475909-transcripts-credits-gpa-accreditation-ncaa-college-applications-scholarshipsfinancial-aid-career-explore-past-threads-linked-here/

 

Edited December 13, 2015 by Sebastian (a lady)

[Tsuga]

I am confused by this last post.  You calculate GPA from number grades, not letter grades?  I thought an A was an A and worth four points.

 

Yes, because letter grades vary too much in how they relate to numbers, not everybody uses + / -.

 

So where I work--this is not homeschool, this is a work environment--we are instructed, for federal reporting and transcript evaluation, and so on, to move whenever possible from the MOST objective grade (percentage) to the number. 

 

It is still a very inexact science due to variation in course difficulty, but at least it doesn't create the rounding problem in which students who are hovering in the mostly-A range are getting rounded up to As.

 

That said, I don't think you have to do that.

 

What I am saying is do not first round up to the nearest letter and then use a point system that generally is not rounded, like  the 4 scale, because that is misleading. It implies that there is a level of precision there in the GPA which has been totally erased by rounding off to the nearest letter grade. Again, mathematically this would not be an issue except that most college prep students are in the B+ to A range, with fewer B+ grades, so rounding will more likely go up than down.

 

If I saw test scores solidly in the 90 - 94% range and a 3.9 or 4.0 GPA I'd just roll my eyes. It's not realistic. That is a 3.5 GPA to me.

[Tsuga]

Oh! And I just want to say... grades are grades. They're just the "game" part of an education. Get a system and stick with it and then forget it. An "A" is not about learning, it's about performance. Yes, that is cynical and irritating. You are not alone in feeling that way.  :grouphug: That's the college admissions game. It really is unfortunate. But if you can, try to compartmentalize it a bit. Your school is about learning and then there is this little game you play on the side for the Educational Industrial Complex because that's life.

[Mom22ns]

Also, from the outsourced providers, we have gotten an actual final grade report.  Would I include copies of those in the college app?  Attach them to my transcript?  Or just keep them as a record if asked for them?

I didn't include them. I would have provided them if asked.

 

Also, for year long courses, do you figure the grade over the whole year, or by each semester?

I only gave course grades. I listed whether the course was 1 credit (full year) or .5 credit, but I only gave one grade either way.

 

What about grades for classes that we do at home that don't really have a number assigned to them?  We don't assign numbers to things like English papers.

In my homeschool, papers were rewritten until I felt they deserved an A, so all papers got an A. It is always up to you to decide if you want to grade a course or not.

 

I don't think most people list percentage grades on transcripts, or anywhere else, only letter grades.

[hopskipjump]

Your school is about learning and then there is this little game you play on the side for the Educational Industrial Complex because that's life.

 

:iagree:  yupyup!

 

 

 

I just used flat-grades (A,B) no + or -. A section on the transcript stated that anything from a 90-100 is an A, 80-89 is a B, etc.

 

Some universities DO reconfigure grade point averages. Some of those DO give higher "points" to an A+ vs an A... but that (at least to the schools where dd applied) was such a rare occurrence that I figured if an A instead of an A+ kept dd from being accepted to a particular university... we'd just call it meant to be and happily move along.

 

From a stylistic POV, I thought the flat-grades looked nicer on the transcript than random +s and -s. :001_cool:

[elegantlion]

I did not use +/- on ds's transcript, straight letter grades only - he was not a 4.0 student either. I went back and forth and asked some questions here. I figured GPA with the +/- and without and it made very little difference in the end. 

 

Each class had a percentage grade and I did the straight 90-80 scale for A-B. I hate hoop jumping and the grades were a bit of that for us, but made the difference for a scholarship (when combined with ACT score). Not doing the +/- made it a bit easier. 

 

Another reason I felt okay doing it that way was that the schools he applied to did not issue grades with the +/- either. 

[Grantmom]

So you said some schools do reconfigure the GPA based on pluses and minuses.  How would they do that?  Do you still list A- or B+ on the transcript, but still just give 4 points for an A and 3 points for a B?

[Grantmom]

I am thinking about calling local high schools and asking how they do it, because in a way, my student will be compared to his peers in his area for many things.

[Sebastian (a lady)]

I've often been able to find the local grading info online. Use search terms like (school name or school district) grade policies or name school profile.

[MerryAtHope]

So, I have a question about grading scales, transcripts, and whether or not you account for "+" and "-" in the GPA.  

 

From what I have read so far, I was going on the assumption that you need to state your grading scale on the transcript and whether the GPA is weighted or unweighted.  However, how do you handle it when you have outsourced classes?  If one class considers an A to be from 90-100 and another considers an A to be from 93-100?  Also, I thought an A was an A, but was just reading on a blog about an A- being a 3.7 instead of a 4.0.  So what does that mean?

 

I am confused, and to be honest, feeling a little jaded at this moment about grades.  I feel like part of why we homeschooled from the beginning was to have the freedom to actually learn and to not have to jump through hoops for a grade.  But now that we are taking more and more outsourced classes, I am reminded from my own school years that getting an A is about more than what you learn.    

 

We did not do pluses or minuses. An 88 or 89 B grade still got a 3.0, and a 91 or 92 A grade still got a 4.0. We simply stated the grading criteria on our transcript, and figured the GPA accordingly. No schools that my son applied to asked for percentages or number grades. I suppose if you were trying to go for top scholarships or more particular schools, it might be more of an issue. Frankly, for the few times grades for my kids fell into the low A or high B category, I really think it all averaged out. 

 

We had no outsourced classes--I graded everything. If the outsourced class provides a transcript for you, then I would reference that on your transcript, and I would figure in the GPA for those classes according to how they figured it. If they don't provide you with a grading standard, then I'd assimilate it into your system. I do think having outsourced classes can complicate your system a bit, but everything has trade-offs. If the classes are good and your kids enjoy them and learn from them--don't let the grading part get you down!

[Grantmom]

I've often been able to find the local grading info online. Use search terms like (school name or school district) grade policies or name school profile.

 

Yes, I've searched their websites thoroughly and can't find it online.  Is this a reasonable approach?  Or should that not really matter?

[Grantmom]

I just talked to them and they use a ten point grading scale, they do not calculate minuses or pluses into the GPA, they don't even record pluses or minuses on the transcript, and they weight the GPA for AP, DE, and honors classes.  Interestingly, AP is worth more than dual enrollment.  An A in an AP class is 5.0, in a DE class is 4.75, and in an Honors class is 4.5.

 

All the outsourced classes that we have taken so far also use a ten point grading scale, but I don't know if they use pluses or minuses.

 

Would it make sense to follow that then?  That seems like that would be most consistent.  I feel like ultimately it might not matter as much for a homeschooler.  It might be grades in DE classes and test scores that matter more for us.  What do you guys think?

[Mom22ns]

It is up to you. It really doesn't matter. Every college gets transcripts from hundreds if not thousands of school districts. Every district's transcript is a little different. There are different grading scales and many weighting philosophies. It doesn't matter which you choose, just that you choose one and use it consistently. 

[Sebastian (a lady)]

Where we started the high school years, there were different weighting schemes in different area districts.  The topic of weighting and availability of honors classes was actually a major topic in school board elections, that saw several new faces elected.

 

When we toured Virginia Tech, the admissions counselor mentioned that they saw many different grading and weighting schemes.  So much so that the school-calculated gpa wasn't used in admissions.  (I suspect the looked at grades in core courses instead.)

 

So on one hand, it is ok to be different than your neighborhood school.  On the other hand, if the local school's system makes sense to you and seems like it is one you'd like to adopt, go for it.  

 

And keep in mind that you have the option of changing your transcript right up to when you have to submit it for college applications.  (I considered past grades and gpa calculations to be set in stone once I sent that transcript off to the first college.  I think I did make a couple edits to course descriptions to provide additional information.)  I had a rough draft transcript at the end of sophomore year that I just kept tweaking.  

[Grantmom]

Okay, so all of the outsourced classes we have taken so far have given both a letter grade and a number grade, with no plus or minus.  But I just found out that one class he is taking this year does give pluses/minuses.  Still uses the same ten point scale though.  So, how would you handle that one grade?

 

Also, for year-long courses, do you take the average from the whole year?  

[elegantlion]

Okay, so all of the outsourced classes we have taken so far have given both a letter grade and a number grade, with no plus or minus.  But I just found out that one class he is taking this year does give pluses/minuses.  Still uses the same ten point scale though.  So, how would you handle that one grade?

 

Also, for year-long courses, do you take the average from the whole year?  

 

I would remove the +/- from the one outsourced class. As for year long courses, I did one grade for the whole year. The one exception might be for senior year when you're mailing out transcripts and a semester grade could make a difference. I opted to just mark the course as "in progress" and did not supply a grade until a final transcript was mailed. My son did not apply to competitive schools, however. If he had applied to different schools, I would have figured a semester GPA. His GPA after senior year was just a smidge higher than after junior year, the issue might have been if it had gone down.