So many unweighted 4.0s.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is no grade for the year in mcps. All classes are1 semester long. Everyone always mentions 79.5 and 89.5...but never the fact that 89.4 is a straight B.

But you can literally get what is a C at most schools (79.5%) for one quarter and still end up with an A.

Can anyone who actually attends class get less than a 79.5%? With test corrections and unlimited late work too? I mean tell me, how does a student who does all the work actually do worse than that?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is no grade for the year in mcps. All classes are1 semester long. Everyone always mentions 79.5 and 89.5...but never the fact that 89.4 is a straight B.

Does MCPS do block schedules vs the standard A/B ?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree MCPS is a whacko but it’s not quite as bad as you are saying. You get an official grade per semester not year, so the lowest you could get for an A is 79.5 one quarter then 89.5 the second quarter - a B and an A averaging to an A.

How does that average to an A? At the very least an A should be 90%. Those two numbers do not average 90%. It’s mid-B (84.5%) Only in crazy DMV land is 84.5% an A!

I'm so jealous. We're in CT (Fairfield County) and an A is a 93. An A-minus is 90-92.

Also, throughout my kid's 2.5 years of high school, no teacher has ever offered retakes. You get what you get.

Same here, across the state border in Westchester County, NY. While it's true that colleges that are popular here have a pretty good idea of how to weight high schools based on rigor, it seems like we are at a disadvantage for college admissions. Ah well. We just have to make the most of what we have.

[Anonymous]

So much misinformation on this thread. To begin, review MCPS policy on semester grades.

[Anonymous]

Aren’t the schools individually recalculated by the colleges ? They look at each schools grading system and how they do things so that your not comparing two kids from diff schools with diff grading systems.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Aren’t the schools individually recalculated by the colleges ? They look at each schools grading system and how they do things so that your not comparing two kids from diff schools with diff grading systems.

I’m not sure they pick up on nuances like the almost B followed by almost A = A scenario.

I’m in FCPS and our system isn’t like this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Aren’t the schools individually recalculated by the colleges ? They look at each schools grading system and how they do things so that your not comparing two kids from diff schools with diff grading systems.

Individually would be hard when you get 40k applications.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is no grade for the year in mcps. All classes are1 semester long. Everyone always mentions 79.5 and 89.5...but never the fact that 89.4 is a straight B.

But you can literally get what is a C at most schools (79.5%) for one quarter and still end up with an A.

Can anyone who actually attends class get less than a 79.5%? With test corrections and unlimited late work too? I mean tell me, how does a student who does all the work actually do worse than that?

You don’t know what you’re talking about. Most high level classes only allow one quiz per quarter to be retaken. In my kid’s AP science class at a W school, as one example, the exam grades average a low C. These are smart, hard working kids. Please don’t fall for the misinformation being spread here.

[Anonymous]

This thread explains so much. Yes, MCPS seems really out of wack. We are in MA and 90-93 is an A-, 94-98 is an A and above a 98 is an A+ (and similar for the B and C ranges). No test retakes but there can be some points back if the class average is low at times with text corrections or a new test (but this is not always). Unsure of deductions for late assignments since my kids always have hand in work in on time. Our school uses a 12 pt scale but there is a bump for honors and AP. However, I’ve been translating my kiddos grades into the 4.0 gpa weight / unweighted using the system Google tells me colleges do. Now it make much more sense that so many here are reporting a 4.0 u/w. I am sure there are occasional brilliant students but to get that at our school it would be at least a 94 in each class each semester.

I would hope that colleges can use AI to combing school grading systems and equalize what is being reported. Otherwise, it really is a lottery.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This thread explains so much. Yes, MCPS seems really out of wack. We are in MA and 90-93 is an A-, 94-98 is an A and above a 98 is an A+ (and similar for the B and C ranges). No test retakes but there can be some points back if the class average is low at times with text corrections or a new test (but this is not always). Unsure of deductions for late assignments since my kids always have hand in work in on time. Our school uses a 12 pt scale but there is a bump for honors and AP. However, I’ve been translating my kiddos grades into the 4.0 gpa weight / unweighted using the system Google tells me colleges do. Now it make much more sense that so many here are reporting a 4.0 u/w. I am sure there are occasional brilliant students but to get that at our school it would be at least a 94 in each class each semester.

I would hope that colleges can use AI to combing school grading systems and equalize what is being reported. Otherwise, it really is a lottery.

I hope so too (I'm the CT poster from above.) I am grateful that our college counselor seems to have a strong relationship with a lot of admissions officers -- our school does have a lot of students get into Ivies every year, even unhooked kids whose unweighted GPAs are below 4.0.

A question, out of curiosity: at our HS, for a full-year class, each quarter counts 20% and the midterm and final are 10% each. Is that what schools are doing elsewhere?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree MCPS is a whacko but it’s not quite as bad as you are saying. You get an official grade per semester not year, so the lowest you could get for an A is 79.5 one quarter then 89.5 the second quarter - a B and an A averaging to an A.

How does that average to an A? At the very least an A should be 90%. Those two numbers do not average 90%. It’s mid-B (84.5%) Only in crazy DMV land is 84.5% an A!

I'm so jealous. We're in CT (Fairfield County) and an A is a 93. An A-minus is 90-92.

Also, throughout my kid's 2.5 years of high school, no teacher has ever offered retakes. You get what you get.

MCPS kids would be jealous of kids that can get a B+. MCPS also does not allow any extra credit which is an alternate means of helping a struggling student frequently used in my CT school district.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In MoCo Public Schools, one can get a B in one semester with a 79.5 average and an A in the other semester with an 89.5 average and get an A (4.0) for the year (with an 84.5 average).

No. You dint get Year grades, only semester. So would have B one semester and A next. Both go on transcript

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is no grade for the year in mcps. All classes are1 semester long. Everyone always mentions 79.5 and 89.5...but never the fact that 89.4 is a straight B.

I’ve never heard of a year grade anywhere. I don’t know why people keep suggesting this.

4.0 unweighted is actually pretty rare at the twoS high schools my kids attend/attended

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's crazy to me how many kids there are on here with unweighted 4.0s. I feel like even last year it was rare. This year 10 replies out of 15 each time the results from another school come up are ALL unweighted 4.0s.
Many are MCPS--it makes sense with their wacky grading scale: you can get 69.5 (C) quarter 1, 79.5 (B) quarter 2, 79.5 (quarter 3) and 89.5 (quarter 4) and end up with an A or 4.0 for the year for the class.
THAT IS INSANE. Many districts are similar. You are a hair what is traditionally failing for a solid quarter (a 69.5) and you still get an A for the year.
And they don't have A minus grades. So an A is a 4.0

Plus retakes (in many classes), no penalty for late work, etc.

Does anyone who does the work, not end up with a 4.0? It really seems like you have to try to do poorly.

Has a 4.0 ceased (even unweighted) ceased to mean ANYTHING? It seems like this is really hurting the kids who are actually super smart. They are lost in the shuffle of so many kids getting "perfect" grades
for doing very average work.

Since MCPS doesn't give HS grades for the year, I don't know where you got your information.

The reason it is like this is because MCPS got rid of final exams. It used to be that if you had an A one quarter and a B the other, the final exam determined your grade. When they abolished final exams, they first tried to say that the second quarter grade determined the grade, so an A/B would be a B but a B/A would be an A. That was unfair, so they went to the current system.

As for retakes and late work, I think the question is what's important. Is the goal to encourage children to actually learn the material, regardless of how many tried it takes? Or is it to impose strict deadlines? MCPS has decided to focus on encouraging learning. What it doesn't do is encourage effective study skills and time management, which are also important.

Regardless, it's easy to tell which kids are "super smart," by looking at the classes they take.

[Anonymous]

Is it true there are no finals in mcps? What about midterms? How are these kids remotely prepared for college?