Getting into college - did you mark "honors" on transcript?

[mirabillis]

This is being bantered about on the HS thread... thought it might be nice to get some of the BTDT moms/dads that might not frequent the HS boards.

 

Did you designate Honors for advanced classes on your transcript?

 

Do you think it helped for either acceptance or scholarships?

 

If you didn't do it, do you wish you had?

[regentrude]

I did not give an honors designation to any home taught classes with either of my kids and see no reason to wish I had.

 

Edited March 6, 2017 by regentrude

[Julie of KY]

I did not designate honors. I did simply state in my school profile that compared to local classes, many of my classes would be honors but I choose not to use that designation.

 

I did email the Vanderbilt admission counselor and ask if it would be helpful to list courses as honors. She said it was only helpful to compare students within a single school and not between schools as each school labels things differently.

 

If my son was aiming for any specific scholarships then I might ask elsewhere, but he got into his top choice without anything listed as honors.

[katilac]

I did designate honors on dd's transcript, and calculated a weighted GPA. Some of the schools she was looking at had merit aid based on GPA and test scores, and a couple of them made it clear that it was based on submitted GPA - if you went to a school that had honors classes but did not weight GPA, you were at a disadvantage. 

 

There is a lot of money at stake with these schools, so yes, it is a definite advantage in those cases.

 

My advice is to just go ahead and designate any honors classes you have, and calculate a weighted GPA. Your student may think they will not apply to any schools where it matters, but you never know, and once you start submitting the transcript, you are stuck. I haven't thought of any disadvantages to designating and weighting, so I will definitely do it again for second dd. 

[8filltheheart]

I don't think there is a blanket answer to this question. I think you need to understand the schools your student is applying to and how your decision will impact them. For tippy top competitive schools, it probably does not matter. For students applying to less selective schools or public universities, it might matter quite a bit.

 

Many schools recalculate GPA based on honors, AP, DE designation for their defined core via their own formula. (Look up SRARs, self-reporting academic record, for an example.) Those formulas generate a number. I don't know how the number is used for sure, but I am assuming that it is some sort of baseline filter.

 

I read the post most recent post by thenposter stating that their student will be doing beyond high school work and will rely on course descriptions and not label courses honors. For some schools that might be ok. But, it is not an approach I would expect to work at all schools.

 

For example, my Dd was just awarded a top scholarship at an OOS flagship. That university states on their website that they reweight GPA according to course classifications. If I had not labeled her courses honors (which they most definitely were bc they were on par with college level work), I would have had to blindly rely that someone would have spent time reading her course descriptions and then independently making the decision that they were honors and give them weight as such. I would also have had to hope that they did that before dismissing her based on computer generated numbers based on a transcript that did not have any courses labeled honors. (Not sure why they would call them honors if I didn't.) That is not a chance I was willing to take. They accepted my designations and she was one to 20 kids to receive one of their top scholarships.

 

It is not a decision I would just make randomly without completely understanding the implications.

 

ETA: I did not weight her GPA bc I knew the schools she was applying to stated they would reweigh.

Edited March 6, 2017 by 8FillTheHeart

[Guest]

I designated honors only for bona fide college level classes, ie, dual credit courses or a high CLEP score for a home-taught course.

 

Eta: I did not bother to do weighted grades.

 

My kids did not apply to highly selective schools. And we were not pursuing scholarship money because we are able to fund our kids without it.

Edited March 6, 2017 by Kinsa

[hopskipjump]

Original plan was to NOT mark any classes as honors.

 

However, once did got to the actual application process, we realized that several schools (and/or scholarship committees) DO consider weighted GPAs or the schools recalculate GPA based upon their own standardized formulas. All of those schools did give more weight to honors courses. Some gave +.5 for honors, +1 for AP.

 

As dd was in competition for some hefty scholarships, I recalculated her GPA and added in some honors courses. Only those courses that, I felt, were truly "honors-worthy" received the designation.

 

I plan to do the same for kids 2&3.

Edited March 6, 2017 by hopskipjump

[Lori D.]

This is being bantered about on the HS thread... thought it might be nice to get some of the BTDT moms/dads that might not frequent the HS boards.

 

1. Did you designate Honors for advanced classes on your transcript?

 

2. Do you think it helped for either acceptance or scholarships?

 

3. If you didn't do it, do you wish you had?

 

Our situation (because, every student's unique situation and choice of school will greatly impact answers): after high school graduation, DS went to the local CC and earned an AAS and knocked out his gen. ed requirements before applying to and transferring to the university. Based on that, my answers:

 

1. No.

But we did do the Honors seal on the diploma to indicate overall GPA (which no one has asked for or seen ;) ). Also, we did no weighted grades for the dual enrollment classes -- we went all unweighted.

 

2. No.

For our state's universities (public and private), I don't think Honors designation or weighted grades would have helped for acceptance, as the schools accept most applicants. As far as scholarships... dual enrollment or AP would have had a lot more weight than Honors. Other states and universities may be different.

 

3. No.

DS's extremely high GPA from the CC is what helped with transfer scholarships.

 

 

Just my overall impression of Honors: because "Honors" means something so very different from school to school, colleges have no standard for measuring what that actually means. I think colleges use national standardized test scores like ACT, and SAT for acceptance, and things like GPA, esp. a GPA backed by AP and dual enrollment (and possibly CLEP), to show advanced level of work for awarding scholarships.

 

However, I think there is nothing wrong with using Honors on transcripts to show higher level of work. I would just make it very clear in the "notes and explanations" section of the transcript what was meant by Honors (i.e., and AP course or dual enrollment or college level course), and would definitely state if using weighted/unweighted grading scale.

 

re: weighted/unweighted grades

I would probably show both the total GPA as weighted and unweighted. I understand that many university admission offices remove the weight and apply their own standardized grading scale to all incoming freshmen, so your weighted GPA may never be considered by the university. However, by having both the weighted and unweighted GPA on the transcript, at least the comparison is there on all of your student's official records, and may be noted by those awarding scholarships -- in other words, it can't hurt to do both. ;)

Edited March 6, 2017 by Lori D.

[snowbeltmom]

I didn't designate any of our classes as "honors" on the transcript.  If my kids would have had applied to public colleges, I would have considered using the honors designation, but since they only applied to private schools, I didn't think the "honors" designation would make any difference in how their transcripts were evaluated.

[teachermom2834]

I did not designate honors but my kids have had enough DE which is weighted by our umbrella school to make up for lack of honors.

 

Our state schools use weighted GPA for scholarship purposes so an unweighted GPA could knock you out of an automatic scholarship even if you have the required ACT score.

 

Our flagship unweights grades and then calculates their own weighted GPA in just the core classes. This reweighted GPA needs to be a 3.8 for any scholarship and a 4.0 to apply to honors program. If the transcripts for my kids lacked enough DE to bump up GPAs to that level I would have had to designate honors.

 

It really depends on target schools. I believe the more competitive and private schools that evaluate applications holistically wouldn't care whether it was designated honors. But those big schools that just plug GPA and test scores into an equation and spit out scholarship amounts? If you haven't designated honors or weighted grades I think you could cost a kid some money.

[Bootsie]

I did not designate "honors" classes on the transcript.  DS had a number of dual credit courses that were labelled as such.  In the school description I stated that we only calculated an unweighted GPA--that a number of courses were dual credit (and specified) and noted that many of the classes would be considered 'honors' and gave examples of courses that were tutored by college professors using college textbooks, etc. 

[swimmermom3]

I did not give an honors designation to any home taught classes with either of my kids and see no reason to wish I had.

 

I did not give an honors designation for any home taught classes either.  The "advanced" or "honors" designation was utilized only on courses given by outside providers. For example, "Advanced Algebra II" is also on an official transcript from our high school where ds took that class. Honors Spanish 3 and 4 retain the designation because they were also taught by an outside provider.

 

No designated honors class received weighting.  That only applied to AP courses (with approved syllabi) where ds took the exam and/or there was an outside provider.  For example, I had an approved audit for AP European History and the course was taught along those lines; however, ds did not take the exam, therefore the class is not labeled "AP" and it is not weighted. 

 

I wanted the schools to see exactly the student they were getting. Grades are verified and validated by ACT, AP, and SAT Subject scores. We never lightened a year once he fully came home and the transcript shows progressively challenging work.

[swimmermom3]

 

re: weighted/unweighted grades

I would probably show both the total GPA as weighted and unweighted. I understand that many university admission offices remove the weight and apply their own standardized grading scale to all incoming freshmen, so your weighted GPA may never be considered by the university. However, by having both the weighted and unweighted GPA on the transcript, at least the comparison is there on all of your student's official records, and may be noted by those awarding scholarships -- in other words, it can't hurt to do both. ;)

 

This is what we did as well. Putting both is easier than worrying about if you made the right decision or not.

 

 

[Joules]

I did designate two kinds of classes as Honors.  Some of the dual enrollment classes were honors classes, so they kept their designation on my transcript. (Our state puts DE on both high school and college transcript, so I followed that.)

 

Second, ds had several English classes that an outside class (not accredited) was a portion of the class.  He not only took that class in addition to his homeschool work, but went above and beyond working with the instructor and the literature.  Though all of his high school classes were college prep, these went so much further, I felt like it should be acknowledged and rewarded.

 

Our state schools only give an extra quality point in GPA for AP and DE, so I chose to do the same.  Those Honors classes that I designated are just the word on the transcript and an explanation in the course description.  

 

I don't know about the scholarship.  Honestly, he's a science major, so it probably looked weird that he ended up with honors credit for English classes instead of science ones.  (He got scholarship offers and acceptance at all schools, except only conditional acceptance (with additional DE required) at the highly selective one he applied to.)

Edited March 6, 2017 by Joules

[Joules]

This is what we did as well. Putting both is easier than worrying about if you made the right decision or not.

 

 

 

Yes, I calculated weighted and unweighted GPA in a table at the bottom of the transcript.  Our state schools also break out "core" and "overall" GPAs, so it made a 2x2 table.

Edited March 6, 2017 by Joules

[swimmermom3]

 

Our state schools only give an extra quality point in GPA for AP and DE, so I chose to do the same.  Those Honors classes that I designated are just the word on the transcript and an explanation in the course description.  

 

I don't know about the scholarship.  Honestly, he's a science major, so it probably looked weird that he ended up with honors credit for English classes instead of science ones.  (He got scholarship offers and acceptance at all schools, except only conditional acceptance (with additional DE required) at the highly selective one he applied to.)

 

I followed the custom of our local schools too and as you mentioned in the following post, honors did not get extra weight there either.

 

As far as scholarships, ds got was offered them at all 8 schools he was accepted to. However, keep in mind that he was fairly well-matched to all of the schools with regards to his stats. I think his lowest percentile was about 48%, so I guess that would have been the reach.

 

 

Edited March 7, 2017 by swimmermom3

[creekland]

No and no regrets.  I'm not fond of weighted GPAs so didn't do that either.  I figured admissions folks were savvy enough to realize that my opinion really didn't mean a thing (no comparison) and my kids scores/grades (ACT/AP/DE) could stand for themselves.

 

Each did well with acceptances and merit aid, so no complaints there.

[Mom22ns]

I designated honors only for bona fide college level classes, ie, dual credit courses or a high CLEP score for a home-taught course.

 

This is what I did too. If they passed a CLEP at the end, it got marked as honors and got weighted. As I just finished typing on the high school board, I weighted grades after being told to do so by the admissions office at ds's current University. They told me many homeschoolers miss out on their top scholarships because they don't weight grades. 

 

For dd I followed the same process for marking honors courses, but did not weight the grades because the colleges she was applying to did not use weighted grades in their scholarship calculations.

[JumpedIntoTheDeepEndFirst]

I designated (and weighted) "honors" for those courses that came with that description, either as an honors level syllabus I purchased or for those online courses that included honors in the title/description.  Courses that I designed never received an honors weight or title.  (The exception being AP courses that were approved by College Board-these were listed as AP and weighted.)

 

So for example, on Clemmie's transcript the math courses we did using AOPS didn't have honors designations.  The pre-calc class she took from CTY that was called "Honors Pre-calculus" was designated honors and weighted.

 

On her transcript I provided unweighted grades for each class.  However, I did provide both overall weighted and unweighted GPAs.  I had an explanation of this calculation on the back of the transcript.

 

As a previous posted mentioned, some institutions and scholarships expected one or the other type of GPA.  I provided both to be sure that no opportunities were missed due to technical errors on my part. 

Edited March 7, 2017 by JumpedIntoTheDeepEndFirst

[SkateLeft]

No, I did not use the honors designation on my transcript. I also didn't weight grades, because all the universities that my girls applied to would have done their own calculations. 

 

My girls both graduated with 2 years of full-time dual enrollment course work in 11th and 12th grade. On their high school transcripts, I listed those courses and indicated they were taken via dual enrollment, but I didn't call them "honors" or weight their grades. They took other courses that could have been labeled "honors" but I choose not to do that.

 

They sent both their homeschool high school transcripts and DE college transcripts when they applied to universities. They were both accepted to all the universities to which they applied, and they both received substantial scholarship awards from all, so not listing honors didn't hurt their scholarship or admissions.

Edited March 7, 2017 by ghostwheel

[TCB]

I'm wondering what would be the advice if the student does not do an accredited AP course but does take the AP exam at the end and does well on it? Would you weight that  course? We are doing the Funda Funda US History course and will be doing the AP exam in May. Is that something that I can then weight as an AP course? All the high school math courses my dd has done have been with an outside provider and she has done the honors option so I was planning as listing them as honors on the transcript. I haven't decided about weighted or non-weighted GPA but may go ahead and list both.

[RootAnn]

So far, the only classes I have marked as Honors on dd's transcript are ones where the outside provider has done so in their class description.

[8filltheheart]

I did not require courses to be followed by CLEP or be from an outside provider in order to classify them as honors.  I made my own determination on courses I created myself. My course descriptions provide the information if the reader wants to see what was done in order to receive the designation honors.

 

FWIW, I mentioned it above, but I am going to mention it again.  Admissions practices now are not the same as just a couple of yrs ago. What I did for my ds's admissions was not the same as for my dd's.  Make sure you understand Self-Reporting Academic Records if your student will be applying via the Coalition App or any other SRAR school application. Making the decision to not label any courses honors simply b/c other homeschoolers didn't might put your child at a distinct disadvantage if the courses are truly honors level.  SRARs ask students to fill in the "level of the class."  That means if their transcript has courses listed as AP, honors, or advanced they get to select that level. These computer programs are self-generating "uniform" transcripts for admissions offices to review, and yes, homeschoolers are required to use them.

 

 

 

.....allows its readers to reorganize the self-reported information to aid in the holistic review. Readers can sort the courses by subject area, grade or course level as well as chronologically which can give a 360-view of the applicant’s high school career.  Automated processing can also be used on the self-reported data, such as high school course pattern analysis and GPA calculation. Both of those tasks are done manually on many college campuses using the transcript data.  http://aacrao.org/resources/resources-detail-view/field-notes--using-self-reported-academic-records-in-the-admissions-process (my note: if you create a fake student and work your way through a SRARs, you will see level as defined as AP, honors, advanced, regular, etc.)

 

Make sure you understand the process being used by the individual institutions being applied to.

[teachermom2834]

I understand the thought that course descriptions will speak for the rigor level of the course. I know that is true- if your course descriptions are even read. But reality is many large schools just use a formula and spend just a couple minutes evaluating applications.

 

I can't mention the school but I have a relative in admissions at a medium sized well regarded public university. (Not a public Ivy but next level down I think). They do not read applications. GPA/test score = admission and or scholarship. They don't look at ECs or LOR or depth of coursework. They do a quick check that minimum requirements are met and make a decision based on test scores and GPA. Not APs, not DE, not number of credits. She says they just do not have time.

 

So...believe it or don't! If you have large schools on your list I would not expect course descriptions and LOR even to be read. I know my ds got his acceptance from state flagship in such a quick manner that there is little chance it was scrutinized.

 

Now if all you have are schools with holistic admissions or highly selective schools I wouldn't worry. But if you have large schools on your list I would not rest on the strength of course descriptions.

 

As always-know your target schools!

 

Just my $.02... flame away!!!

[creekland]

I understand the thought that course descriptions will speak for the rigor level of the course. I know that is true- if your course descriptions are even read. But reality is many large schools just use a formula and spend just a couple minutes evaluating applications.

 

I can't mention the school but I have a relative in admissions at a medium sized well regarded public university. (Not a public Ivy but next level down I think). They do not read applications. GPA/test score = admission and or scholarship. They don't look at ECs or LOR or depth of coursework. They do a quick check that minimum requirements are met and make a decision based on test scores and GPA. Not APs, not DE, not number of credits. She says they just do not have time.

 

So...believe it or don't! If you have large schools on your list I would not expect course descriptions and LOR even to be read. I know my ds got his acceptance from state flagship in such a quick manner that there is little chance it was scrutinized.

 

Now if all you have are schools with holistic admissions or highly selective schools I wouldn't worry. But if you have large schools on your list I would not rest on the strength of course descriptions.

 

As always-know your target schools!

 

Just my $.02... flame away!!!

 

No flaming at all from here.  Like I mentioned before - I assumed my guys' scores, etc would stand for themselves - and they did.  I didn't need to weight grades or designate Honors (but did say things like Stats with AP Test Score = 5) on the transcript.

 

I never provided a single course description - not one.  It was absolutely no problem for my guys.

 

Mine were also in the Top 25% (or better) at the schools they applied to though, so I don't think I needed to.  A quick glance from admissions was all that was needed.  Since they got decent merit aid too, what we did was sufficient for their schools.