Once again - weighted grades?

[sheryl]

DD is a rising senior and hopefully there is still time for me to enroll her in CC.   Yes, I'm STILL behind in grading and need to catch up.  With the transcript to apply to CC, do I weight the grades?

 

Weighted grades...

 

- for high school level classes (core or all such as: music, electives, etc)?

 

- anyone care to talk me through this?

 

:)

Thanks!

 

 

 

[sheryl]

anyone?  before I try on chat....

[Renaissance Mom]

We customized our transcript according to the college. Some actually wanted weighted grades for scholarship consideration, while most specified unweighted. I labeled the transcript accordingly.

 

For my weighted transcript, I snooped on the local school district website. They had a chart for how they weight grades for honors classes, AP classes, and DE classes. I used their system (extra 1/2 point for honors, extra full point for AP and DE).

[daijobu]

Can you call the cc and ask what they expect?  If not, I would choose the method that results in the higher GPA, lol.  

[Sebastian (a lady)]

DD is a rising senior and hopefully there is still time for me to enroll her in CC. Yes, I'm STILL behind in grading and need to catch up. With the transcript to apply to CC, do I weight the grades?

 

Weighted grades...

 

- for high school level classes (core or all such as: music, electives, etc)?

 

- anyone care to talk me through this?

 

:)

 

Thanks!

 

 

Is this for dual enrollment for a rising senior or for acceptance as a high school graduate?

 

I weighted grades that were above regular expectations and had some outside factor. Ex Advanced Placement courses or courses taught as advanced by an outside provider.

 

Having said that I don't think the cc's my kids have attended as dual enrolled students cared. The firs school only looked at the transcript to make a math placement after the placement test. I don't think the second school looked at all.

[katilac]

DD is a rising senior and hopefully there is still time for me to enroll her in CC.   Yes, I'm STILL behind in grading and need to catch up.  With the transcript to apply to CC, do I weight the grades?

 

Weighted grades...

 

- for high school level classes (core or all such as: music, electives, etc)?

 

- anyone care to talk me through this?

 

:)

 

Thanks!

 

 

 

Electives are very rarely weighted: music, art, psychology, and so on. It's rare even for academic electives like foreign languages (although certainly not unheard of). 

 

I think you designate a class as honors when it goes above the expected, and correlates to the general idea of what an honors class means. 

 

I decide this in part by reading descriptions and syllabi of various honors classes (google "English 10th-grade honors" and so on). There is a fair amount of variation, but it will give you a rough idea. I look at texts used, chapters covered, books read, assignments, and so on. 

 

You don't have to do the SAME things to justify an honors designation, just equivalent. 

 

in some classes, the text used will answer the question, or the level of the text used - some texts are designated honors, or they have levels of assignments for honors (or the new buzzword, pre AP). 

 

The CC may not care, but I wanted to make sure all of my transcripts matched. I can't think of a scenario in which a university would see the transcript I submitted for DE, but better safe than sorry. 

[Mom22ns]

I would not weight grades for a CC. I would be shocked to find they care about weighted GPA. You could call and ask. I did do custom transcripts for different schools. I added weighted GPA only to those who specifically wanted it.

 

When I did weight grades, I weighted only classes that could clearly be shown to be college level work. So if they took a CLEP, an AP, DE or just worked out of college texts, the course was listed to reflect that (honors, AP, DE) and I weighted those grades to be worth 5 points for an A instead of 4. That's all I did. There are lots of weighting systems. I would not weight music or electives unless they were taken DE because I don't see how those would be shown to be above level since there is less of a standard scope and sequence to a high school level version of those topics.

YMMV

[AngieW in Texas]

I didn't weight grades on the transcript at all. The universities I talked to all said that they would unweight the grades anyway.

 

At the public school where I teach now, honors/pre-AP courses are weighted by 0.5 points on the GPA (so an A is 4.5 and a B is 3.5) and AP courses and dual credit courses are weighted by a full point on the GPA (so an A is 5.0 and a B is 4.0).

[Sebastian (a lady)]

I didn't weight grades on the transcript at all. The universities I talked to all said that they would unweight the grades anyway.

 

At the public school where I teach now, honors/pre-AP courses are weighted by 0.5 points on the GPA (so an A is 4.5 and a B is 3.5) and AP courses and dual credit courses are weighted by a full point on the GPA (so an A is 5.0 and a B is 4.0).

 

Practices definitely run the gamut.  We had one school say they didn't consider GPA at all, because there were too many different systems (presumably they did look at grades in specific courses).  Another school specifically suggested weighting for AP and dual enrollment because their merit aid considered gpa and weighting was typical in the schools where they drew students.

[8filltheheart]

I just wrote about this on the Foerster thread. Just in the few yrs between my graduating srs, the process is rapidly changing. What was true for my older kids is not necessarily true today. With the implementation of computer generate #s based on self-reported academic records which have to match their transcripts exactly, labels of courses matter. My assumption is that that computer generated number is meant to deal with differences in weighting and schools generating their own. But, it makes a huge difference when kids are not taking courses which match traditional labels.

 

I would not assume these issues don't matter. I personally think the matter a lot in order to get past the initial filters.

 

We haven't gotten to the point where we have gotten answers on how to enter my 12th grader's untraditional course work (like French 7.) But I wouldn't just enter courses as non-honors, non-accelerated just bc you homeschool and assume that it doesn't matter. If they took honors equivalent courses, Imwould contact admissions and asked them how to proceed.

[wapiti]

Thinking out loud, it makes sense to designate honors if the course is worthy.  Weighting is another matter; FWIW, my dd's private school does not weight honors classes.  They only weight APs (1 point).

[goldberry]

 

 

At the public school where I teach now, honors/pre-AP courses are weighted by 0.5 points on the GPA (so an A is 4.5 and a B is 3.5) and AP courses and dual credit courses are weighted by a full point on the GPA (so an A is 5.0 and a B is 4.0).

 

That's the way it is done here also.

 

ETA, DD's transcript shows weighted and unweighted, and a key for how we weighted, (college courses weighted 1 point).  We didn't have AP or Honors.

Edited August 10, 2016 by goldberry

[Daria]

Do you weight community college courses?

 

One of the schools DS is looking at is very specific that they use weighted and not weighted grades.  Since the majority of his credits come from public school, I figure I can just use their weightings, which puts him solidly in their 25 - 75 bracket, but I'm not sure how to include his CC courses.  Should I weight them like honors classes?  

[swimmermom3]

Ds's transcript shows both weighted and unweighted cumulative GPA.  The schools are savvy. If you only show weighted, they'll know why.

 

I added the following note on his transcript:

 

Grade points were assigned on a 4.0 scale, with one additional point assigned for Advanced Placement 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 the College Board as meeting AP standards. 

 

I believe I adapted this from Sebastian's example on another thread. I did not weight for Honors courses for the reasons stated above.