Curious— your kid didn’t have to take PE or an art/music class? If they did, it was an honors class? |
For our FCPS HS, 4.0W was top 20%. (just calculating the number of honor students mentioned at graduation/total # of students in 12th grade) |
What do you mean by courseload is most rigorous? If someone has a WGPA above 4.0, that indicates that they have taken weighted classes. More weighted classes and As will keep bumping them above 4.0. |
You’re new to this. Most rigorous is a term of art for college admissions. |
So what’s the top 5%? That’s usually about the UVA cutoff. |
Oh yeah, they took PE, during the summer. No art/music |
How is most rigorous quantified? For example, our high school offers 27 AP courses. How many of those does my kid need to take to qualify for most rigorous? |
In case that's not clear, taking PE during the summer allows the student to take it pass/fail. It frees up a period to take a more rigorous class (thus allowing for a better GPA). We didn't have a clue about gaming the system with our oldest. He took all honors or AP classes, only earned one B in high school, but any GenEd As in PE/music/electives he was curious about, pulled his gpa down. |
I would say 10 at the minimum, half (13/14) if possible. |
I often read this. Truly curious, what colleges specifically recalculate GPA by these means or others. It seems to me admissions offices would be way too busy to actually do this for each student as there would need to be some human piece to the recalculation. |
I am a professor that worked at two universities that recalculated the GPA using enrollment/admissions software that uses historical data, school profiles, transcripts, and other info to create a grade equivalency to standardize grades on a 4.0 scale. During the holistic part of the review process, individual rigor is accessed. |
new here -- does this mean that 20% of the class is graduating with 4.0+? I cannot wrap my head around that. |
Oops i got my math wrong. It wasnt 20%. It was 25%. At graduation, they congratulated the 140 students who completed at 4.0 or above. There were 552 in the graduating class. |
. All selective colleges recalculate the GPAs. They hire people under contract to do this. It varies by college, but they all just start with the letter grade earned for all or some (core) classes and then add back in some form of weighting for some AP and IB classes. For colleges that get a ton of applications from your high school, the colleges often know the top 5 or 10% cut offs better than the high school guidance counselors do. Weighted means nothing for college admissions process. |
Interesting but not relevant for determine what the cut off is for the top 5% of the class. |