S/o weighting grades for DE classes

[Hilltopmom]

Ok, so if I want to weight grades for DE and or honors classes, um, how do I do that?

 

Ds is applying to state schools who say they will use the weighted GPA, and GPA plus SAT scores determine merit aide cut off levels.

 

His As in all of his DE classes (& a couple of homemade "honors" ones) will certainly help reach the higher cut off.

 

So, an A in a semester long DE class would count as 5.0 points instead of 4.0 on a high school transcript? Is that correct?

[Matryoshka]

This is how our local ps does it. 5.0 scale for DE or AP, 4.5 scale for Honors. I did not end up weighting dd's transcript, though, as both the schools she was interested in were very adamant that they would strip out any weighting and re-weight with their own algorithm.

 

Dd is transferring now, and now I'm wondering if I should have weighted after all, but too late now... At least it's very clear which classes are AP and DE.

 

ETA... I think I will weight next dd's transcript. She'll have a lot of DE, no AP. She has done the honors level of Derek Owens; I'll have to decide how to list that (especially if I switch her to a MOOC for Calc)

Edited March 6, 2017 by Matryoshka

[momofjep]

Our state currently counts them as honors level classes, but after next year they will count as AP classes. Stinks for my oldest but the others will benefit from it. Maybe see how they are counted at your local high school and use the same thing? 

[Kassia]

Our local high school does not weight grades.  I wasn't planning on doing it for my dd but, after reading threads here, I'm not so sure anymore.

[teachermom2834]

An extra quality point (5.0 for an A) in DE or AP classes and an extra .5 point for honors.

 

I was originally against weighting but have changed my opinion. My kids have tended to apply to schools that use the weighted GPA for automatic merit aid.

 

If my kid has achieved the ACT cutoff score for a scholarship I would not want him to miss out because I was a harsh grader or didn't weight.

[MinivanMom]

Ok, so if I want to weight grades for DE and or honors classes, um, how do I do that?

 

Ds is applying to state schools who say they will use the weighted GPA, and GPA plus SAT scores determine merit aide cut off levels.

 

His As in all of his DE classes (& a couple of homemade "honors" ones) will certainly help reach the higher cut off.

 

So, an A in a semester long DE class would count as 5.0 points instead of 4.0 on a high school transcript? Is that correct?

 

If you are only weighting to meet the merit cut-offs for your state schools, then you really need to do what is standard in your state. Check the websites of some of the public high schools near you. There will usually be an explanation of how they weight grades. Just weight your gpa the same way that the public schools in your state do.

[EKS]

I would do  a 4.5 scale for honors and 5.0 for DE/AP.

[SparklyUnicorn]

Wow, that's cool.  I had no idea.

 

 

[Hilltopmom]

Yeah, I wasn't going to weight them originally, but am now.

 

I'll have to investigate how the Local schools do them. Only a few even offer AP or DE.

 

But for putting in college level work at the CC or state U, seems like he should get more of a GPA boost than just regular high school classes.

I mean, there's a big difference between getting an A high school art class vs As in computer science classes at the college level. (Or you'd hope so)

And senior year, all but one of his classes will be DE.

Edited March 6, 2017 by Hilltopmom

[SparklyUnicorn]

Yeah, I wasn't going to weight them originally, but am now.

 

I'll have to investigate how the Local schools do them. Only a few even offer AP or DE.

 

But for putting in college level work at the CC or state U, seems like he should get more of a GPA boost than just regular high school classes.

I mean, there's a big difference between getting an A high school art class vs As in computer science classes at the college level. (Or you'd hope so)

 

Um yeah...why not if that is common practice? 

[Hilltopmom]

Off to re calculate GPA, lol...

[8filltheheart]

Yeah, I wasn't going to weight them originally, but am now.

 

I'll have to investigate how the Local schools do them. Only a few even offer AP or DE.

 

But for putting in college level work at the CC or state U, seems like he should get more of a GPA boost than just regular high school classes.

I mean, there's a big difference between getting an A high school art class vs As in computer science classes at the college level. (Or you'd hope so)

And senior year, all but one of his classes will be DE.

This was why I ended up giving up on weighting my ds's transcript a few yrs ago. He had a 4.0 unweighted, so he surpassed any automatic scholarship cutoff. And I could not figure out a logical way to weight. If an AP was a 1 pt GPA boost, it seemed silly that a 300 jr level physics class would have the same weight as AP chem. So I just left them unweighted.

 

If he hadn't had a 4.0, I probably would have just weighted everything equally as absurd as it seemed.

[Arcadia]

Example from a national scholarship for grades 4-11 based in Maryland, they have a formula given for their scholarship application. So maybe google for the scholarship information for the state universities you are looking at?

 

"Policy for Weighting Courses – High School Students:

High school grades in courses listed on the report card as Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) are weighted by one point. High school grades in courses listed as Gifted and Talented or Honors are weighted by a half point in the GPA calculation. If a high school student is participating in a dual enrollment course at a local college or university, those college courses are weighted by one point. These weighted grades are meant to help us accurately calculate GPAs, taking into account the difficulty of the curriculum." http://carsonscholars.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/GPA-Calculation-Rules-and-Policies.pdf

[Penelope]

Deleted

Edited March 6, 2017 by Penelope

[MinivanMom]

Yeah, I wasn't going to weight them originally, but am now.

 

I'll have to investigate how the Local schools do them. Only a few even offer AP or DE.

 

But for putting in college level work at the CC or state U, seems like he should get more of a GPA boost than just regular high school classes.

I mean, there's a big difference between getting an A high school art class vs As in computer science classes at the college level. (Or you'd hope so)

And senior year, all but one of his classes will be DE.

 

You would think so, but it's common in some areas to give an extra point for AP & only give 0.5 for Honors and DE. I find that baffling, but I've been told that it's done to prevent kids from taking easy classes at the community college for a gpa boost instead of taking more challenging AP classes. I can see how that could be an issue in some areas. In our area, most kids taking DE are taking classes at the state university after exhausting available classes at their high school, so DE is given a full extra point like AP.

 

I wish there were some way for colleges to take the time to look over transcripts more carefully instead of evaluating all the kids on a formula, but I understand that most state universities don't have the resources to spend that much time on each individual application.

[Renaissance Mom]

The colleges our oldest dd applied to told us whether they considered weighted grades or not. One specified unweighted, another recommended weighting, several didn't care. FWIW, the school that specified unweighted grades only awarded dd a full tuition scholarship based on her transcript and test scores.

 

If the information about weighting isn't on a college's admission page on their website, call them. It saves a lot of blood, sweat, and tears when you submit what they want. :)

[Lori D.]

The main thing is to SAY on your transcript that they ARE weighted grades, and HOW they are weighted (i.e. 5.0 for AP and DE, 4.5 for Honors, 4.0 for regular -- or whatever).

 

And I do encourage you to also include an "academic summary" on the transcript that says something like this:

 

4.07 = cumulative GPA on a scale of 0.00 to 5.00, weighted

3.79 = cumulative GPA on a scale of 0.00 to 4.00, unweighted

28.5 = total credits

yes = diploma earned

6-4-17 = graduation date

[KarenNC]

If you are only weighting to meet the merit cut-offs for your state schools, then you really need to do what is standard in your state. Check the websites of some of the public high schools near you. There will usually be an explanation of how they weight grades. Just weight your gpa the same way that the public schools in your state do.

 

This is what we are doing, particularly since she will be primarily applying to schools in our state so I want her information to be as close to the format these colleges are used to seeing as possible. We had a speaker from the admissions department at the local state university speak to our homeschool group a couple of years ago, and she called out not weighting grades as a problem with homeschoolers because she felt it shortchanged the homeschool students in scholarship and admissions processes. She also said she felt homeschoolers were frequently shortchanged, particularly in the scholarship process, by not labeling courses as "honors" if they were of similar or greater rigor as similar courses in the public schools.

 

Around here, it is usual to weight 0.5 for honors, 1.0 for AP/IB/DE, so that's what we've done. Our actual district was weighting 1.0 for honors, 2.0 for AP/IB/DE her 9th grade year, along with having a seven point grading scale, but switched to a 10 point scale and the 0.5/1.0 weighting the following year, so we went with the more general practice among schools in our state of 10 point scale and 0.5/1.0 weighting. She took a few courses through the local school system in 9th grade in a hybrid homeschool program, but fortunately her grades in them weren't impacted by the shift (so no 90-92 that shifted from a B to an A), as that made it more straightforward for us.

Edited March 6, 2017 by KarenNC

[cjzimmer1]

I hadn't  planned on weighting either but one school we had visited advised us to do so.  For scholarship considerations they simply looked at the highest GPA listed on the transcript.  So my advice is to simply include both and allow the schools to pick what they want.

[Mom22ns]

I hadn't  planned on weighting either but one school we had visited advised us to do so.  For scholarship considerations they simply looked at the highest GPA listed on the transcript.  So my advice is to simply include both and allow the schools to pick what they want.

 

This is what I found too. From these boards, I had never planned to weight grades, but the school ds is now attending told me to be sure to do it, that many homeschoolers miss out on scholarships because they don't weight grades. I used a 5.0 for DE, AP, and honors because the only courses I listed as honors were those he passed a CLEP in, so I figured those were college credit level too.

 

Dd only applied to state schools with guaranteed admissions for her stats that didn't use weighted grades for scholarships. They were all happy to supply that information and I didn't bother to include a weighted GPA on her transcript.