This was also my experience. I accidentally got bumped down to non-honors English my junior year of high school and the standard class was significantly more work.
Did she get C’s consistently? I don’t think the OP said that, just that C’s are weighted as A’s in the GPA.
Also, even if they aren’t weighted more heavily, colleges will still notice that she’s taking harder classes and consider that when looking at her apps.
I don’t understand the problem. If the classes are marked “AP” on her transcript, they shouldn’t be weighted. If everyone is marked down as taking “History” with no differentiation between AP and non-AP levels, then maybe I would understand. Are you saying that her transcript would say: AP-History grade: C gpa: 4.0? Most elite colleges would rather see that your daughter is challenging herself by taking the hardest classes possible. I remember my college interviewer being impressed not at my gpa (a B+, nothing spectacular), but at the fact I had a B+ average while taking the hardest classes my school offered, all at the same time. So yes, there is still a reason to take the AP level, even if your gpa suffers a bit.
As someone recently out of the public school system, this one is blown way out of proportion. They DO have scoring and no, everyone does NOT get the same sized trophy, at least around here. When I was in middle school what, 6 years ago? If we lost at soccer or volleyball we got to see the other team parade around with the big trophy. In band the scoring was god-damn competitive, with really good teams missing the mark from “Excellent” to “Superior” by .2-.3 points because of the prestige it implies. In Band Day (the big marching competition around here, even bigger than State) only one team had gotten Superior for about 6 years straight, no band from the city it was sponsored in got it for around 28 years and my school personally hadn’t gotten it for about 36. When we finally got a superior with distinction (90% or above on all areas of grading) my senior year they were grading HARDER and they’re getting even harder every year. While academics may be crippled competitively, sports and ESPECIALLY Fine Arts are graded extremely hard, in Arizona at least.
True, I’ve only had to take a government class for college, which was pretty much the same as my high school government class.
The AP history class was basically a more in depth American history class, with more focus on the Civil War to the 20th centuty.
The AP English class was focused on British Literature mostly, and mostly on the classics. My college Englsih classes were pretty much just literature classes, and I didn’t get into anything close what was in the AP class until my second year of college. (I was an English major). I dropped the AP English in high school, but I had friends take it, and they have said pretty much the same thing. The high school class was harder than what most of the non-english majors had to take.
Again, I reiterate that she is in Beta club (requiring maintaining an A-B average – non-weighted). The benefit to weighting the grades is that yes, they count extra on the GPA – I don’t know if I can explain it correctly, but I shall try.
The way it worked for me, and I only assume it still (until next year) does is this. In standard classes, you get 4pts for an A, 3 for a B, and so on down to 0 for an F. In Honors (or what was just “advanced” for my school) you get 5, 4, 3, 2 and 0 – meaning an F is still an F. For AP, it was 6, 5, 4, 3 and 0. In all honesty, it is only about recognition in the short-term for grades. Colleges do un-weight the scores.
As has been mentioned, it doesn’t really matter to those students – like my daughter – who get A’s and B’s in the classes – aside from the amount of work they have to do and the expectations put on the kids. For example, my sophomore English teacher point-blank told us that she had never given a 5 on a paper in her advanced classes – the highest we could hope to get would a 4* if we wanted to get a 5 we should transfer to a standard class. Way higher expectations.
Hey, Justin did you notice I said it was minor? Thanks for the personal attack, though 
I love being called “entitled” because I think it’s asinine to not recognise kids for being good at something. Reading for comprehension isn’t a strong suit for you, is it? Pretty sure my OP said she is consistently getting A’s and B’s. Oops, sorry for being harsh.
Just a reminder, folks: this thread isn’t in the Pit right now.
The crap? How do they determine who gets what part and who gets solos? I’ll admit auditioning for solos works, we did it, but auditioning everyone for their part of every piece? Or is it one of those “they’re not allowed to but work around it with clever wording” things?
My high school didn’t have weighted grades. Getting a B in the academic track was the same as getting a B in the “business track” was the same as getting a B in remedial English.
And, frankly, nobody minded. I’m surprised that anyone would care that much about it.
Fortunately, they do still pick the best students for solos and whatnot, but they can’t have a first chair. It’s crazy.
I took four AP classes in High School. As far as I can recall, there was no weighting. I don’t even recall knowing my GPA. I took those classes because I wanted to learn more, be smarter, and test myself, not for any kind of grade benefit. I ended up going to a very good university where the only way to use your AP credits was to skip freshman year, and I didn’t want to do that, so in the end I got no real compensation for those classes, except the benefit of having learned a lot, not only about the material, but about how to study and work hard. It has never occurred to me to look back and be anything but happy that I put in the effort, even though my old calculus tests now look like unintelligible gobbledygook to me.
Oh, and when I decided I didn’t like AP Biology, and the information wasn’t valuable enough to me, I dropped it and went into standard biology. I know that high school and even earlier academics have gotten more competitive, but I find it hard to believe that intelligent, motivated students would slack off rather than taking an AP class no matter what the supposed prize. Working your ass off and becoming a more informed, thoughtful and knowledgable person is its own reward.
Same here…
And from what I remember when applying to undergrad (gah, 8 years ago!), the colleges stressed that they would take the transcripts and do their own fancy shmancy GPA weighing system.
So even if you didn’t have the HS weighted average, it would show in your transcript as Honors or AP, and the college would then give it a different ranking than say someone who took remedial English for 3 years and always got an A.
Not to mention that if you are in an AP class and you ace the test, you’ve shaved a couple of classes off of your degree.
That’s ridiculous. Students should be recognized by the school for their achievements, especially academic ones (since, presumably, that’s what it’s for). Sure, they’ll provide their “own rewards”, but the valedictorian should be just as distinguished as the MVP on the sports team. It’s not an “entitlement” if he’s actually earned it. And why shouldn’t the class rank be known; there has to be a rank in the first place by the simple fact of grading numerically. Why hide it? I hate this new idea that everything has to be noncompetitive. It doesn’t fool anybody, and it’s not reflective of reality.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
I’ve always thought weighted grading was a little bizarre, because I can’t tell what a given GPA means when it’s weighted. 4.23 GPA means nothing to me. What’s the standard of perfection? I guess it makes sense, but my school never did it. I graduated with a 3.997 GPA where the standard of perfection was a 4.0. I took AP English class, which was structured as a two-year program, with junior year being the ‘‘practice’’ run. I knew I was going to pass the exams the first time around. I went to my guidance counselor and asked them what I was going to do my senior year. They told me not to worry about it because nobody had ever passed both AP English tests during the first year. I became the first student in the history of the school to earn 5s (top score) on both exams the first time around. Having no more use for AP English, I sat around twiddling my thumbs during senior year. (And I was penalized for it, despite the fact that I tried to avoid it… don’t get me started, or you will hear the most petty elitist sour grapes rant of your life.)
Those classes aren’t that hard. The only reason I got an A- for one term is because I was too busy trying not to get a glass bottle broken over my head to study for the Final Exam. I was not the only high achiever to earn an A- that term, but I was the only one to not have my parents go in and bitch about it until the grade was changed.
So we had two Valedictorians – one was a freaking genius who already had coauthorship on a freaking chemistry paper. She was naturally good at everything but NOT BETTER THAN ME AT ENGLISH. She was also a friend of mine. The other Valedictorian was a reasonably smart, popular guy who deliberately took classes like Weight Lifting to ensure he kept his 4.0. There was a vast disparity between his intelligence and hers. I could have thrashed his ass academically but I came out 2nd since I took harder courses.
I still got into the college of my dreams, still graduated Salutatorian and still got to make a stupid speech and win a bunch of awards. Was it fair that Mr. Popular was ranked the same as Miss Smarty Pants? No. But it’s not like colleges couldn’t figure out what was going on. Both Mr. Popular and I went on to the University of Michigan, where he struggled to pass and I graduated With Honors. Miss Smarty Pants went on to major in chemistry at Yale, where I hope she did very well. There is a distinct pecking order here – Miss Smarty Pants is all around more gifted intellectually than I am, and both of us could wipe the floor with Mr. Popular. And our relative levels of success seem to match that.
I guess my point is, eventually everyone gets theirs. Some of us survived without weighted grading, so your daughter can too.
By the way, no first chair in band is total BS.
I wish I had taken more AP classes and tests in high school; it could have saved me some time and moolah in college if the college accepted 'em as credit. As it was, I got out of Stats at the college level, happily.
One last thing…
As far as the, ‘‘when everyone is special, no one will be,’’ has anyone mediocre actually supported that opinion? I just wondered, as it seems like it’s in the best interest of high achievers to get recognition for high achievement-- doesn’t mean it’s best for society, necessarily.
Two whole extra points for an AP grade? That’s total bull. Honors and AP at our school was out of a 5.0 scale (so a regular A was 4 points, Honors and AP 5). Pushing it up two whole points to six is a bit ridiculous.
And I’m sorry, but your daughter needs to realize the benefit of AP classes is 1: education and 2: college credit. I basically passed out of my first year of college thanks to AP.
You’re not going to get any sympathy from me for the school only offering an additional 5 percentage points to the grade for an AP course. My school didn’t even give that.
I took 3 AP classes my senior year in high school (late 90s). My AP Calculus test scores earned me three credits in Calculus 101, which was nice as an engineering major. My AP English scores earned me three credits in English 101, which I would have received for my SAT or ACT scores anyway. My AP History scores earned me three credits in some social science course that were useless as anything but elective credits above and beyond the number of credits required to graduate in my major. One of three AP classes was useful in a quantifiable way, and only because of my major.
Those credits aren’t the real benefit of AP courses, though. The real benefit is being with smart students who give a damn about grades. I probably learned more in the classes than I would have in other classes. Even if I didn’t learn more, the classes were more enjoyable. It’s the same reason I liked college more than high school. I was still as nerdy and academic, had an anemic dating life, and was no more socially popular, but at least I wasn’t surrounded by people who only existed to harass people like me.
Why isn’t getting an A in an AP class enough of a reward on its own?
Who honestly thinks an A in AP Calc is the same as an A in remedial mathematics?
I won’t comment on the AP stuff, since plenty of people have, and I agree with those telling your daughter to suck it up. I would, however, like to know more about this. Does the band director refuse to hold chair auditions? What would happen if the class (or some role models, top players in the band) joined together and petitioned the director to hold chair auditions. Is there a pecking order that has arisen naturally? These kids must have a pretty good idea where they are in relation to each other, in terms of playing ability.