Dropping HS credits earned in MS from transcript (Arlington)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP here - all the grades are As but b/c they aren’t weighted they actually bring down the overall gpa.

I just emailed our counselor about this for clarification. My DC has all As from MS, but the weighting is impacted.

Right but read the college counselor's post. APS's weighting doesn't matter to colleges.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:College counselor here - I wish APS did a better job of educating families and students about what colleges care about, and this is. not. it.

a) Selective schools are looking at unweighted GPA and b) rigorous courseload. Dropping middle school classes to bring a 4.4 to a 4.5 or whatever is more likely to make a school think something went very wrong in 8th grade.

So much about the grade inflation at APS results from bones administrators have thrown to parents, over the course of decades, who think they're doing their kids a favor by trying to game this out. It truly will not make a positive difference if you drop As from a middle school transcript.

Thank you! This validates my decision not to have my kid drop their middle school grades. I figured colleges would calculate the GPA their own way so it would not matter if weighted GPA could be slightly higher. I also thought it was a plus for colleges to see As in high school courses back in middle school so why drop those. Also I was paranoid that we would accidentally drop a credit that is needed for graduation. So we left them.

One college session explained how their school recalculated. They dropped all classes outside of the core 5 subjects. Then AB/DE got a 1 point boost and honors/intensified got a .5 boost. From MS, my kid brings two foreign language (honors only offered 1 year), 1 math (honors) and 1 history (no honors option). So, in theory, if 2 of those clases were dropped, they would help the GPA even with college recalculation. If your kid did enough foreign language in HS, no problem. The history credit can be replaced by certain AP scores and the math credit doesn't matter as long as there was another verified credit in HS (which there is for most).

[Anonymous]

Not every school recalculates the same way. But I dont think any of them would use the school's weighting because schools weigh differently and not all schools offer the same types of classes.

[Anonymous]

If school has a single valedictorian then would be only reason would even consider that and not for purposes of colleges. So many schools now do everyone is valedictorian so no reason to do for that either. If are trying to game for single valedictorian, remember is more than just dropping MS classes, should also be doing pass/fail for as many non-core classes to get the denominator lower and take as many full bump classes. Do think too much time on hands if doing this though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If school has a single valedictorian then would be only reason would even consider that and not for purposes of colleges. So many schools now do everyone is valedictorian so no reason to do for that either. If are trying to game for single valedictorian, remember is more than just dropping MS classes, should also be doing pass/fail for as many non-core classes to get the denominator lower and take as many full bump classes. Do think too much time on hands if doing this though.

This is a post about Arlington. I've never heard of pass fail in APS. Does that exist here?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:College counselor here - I wish APS did a better job of educating families and students about what colleges care about, and this is. not. it.

a) Selective schools are looking at unweighted GPA and b) rigorous courseload. Dropping middle school classes to bring a 4.4 to a 4.5 or whatever is more likely to make a school think something went very wrong in 8th grade.

So much about the grade inflation at APS results from bones administrators have thrown to parents, over the course of decades, who think they're doing their kids a favor by trying to game this out. It truly will not make a positive difference if you drop As from a middle school transcript.

I don’t believe this is true at all schools. You cant tell me that colleges that are getting 25,000+ applications are recalculating everyones grades. They have a cutoff and then more intensely review those over that hurdle.

[Anonymous]

My kid dropped 7 high school classes that were taken in middle school. A whole year of extra classes makes an impact on GPA

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid dropped 7 high school classes that were taken in middle school. A whole year of extra classes makes an impact on GPA

How much of an impact?

We are looking at 4. How on earth did a kid take 7 HS credits in an Arl middle school? Usually it's 2 years foreign language, one World Geo and 1 or 2 math classes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:College counselor here - I wish APS did a better job of educating families and students about what colleges care about, and this is. not. it.

a) Selective schools are looking at unweighted GPA and b) rigorous courseload. Dropping middle school classes to bring a 4.4 to a 4.5 or whatever is more likely to make a school think something went very wrong in 8th grade.

So much about the grade inflation at APS results from bones administrators have thrown to parents, over the course of decades, who think they're doing their kids a favor by trying to game this out. It truly will not make a positive difference if you drop As from a middle school transcript.

I don’t believe this is true at all schools. You cant tell me that colleges that are getting 25,000+ applications are recalculating everyones grades. They have a cutoff and then more intensely review those over that hurdle.

They don’t do it by hand, there is software that does it automatically.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid dropped 7 high school classes that were taken in middle school. A whole year of extra classes makes an impact on GPA

How much of an impact?

We are looking at 4. How on earth did a kid take 7 HS credits in an Arl middle school? Usually it's 2 years foreign language, one World Geo and 1 or 2 math classes.

There are CS classes: Intro CS, Game Design, Robotics
My kid dropped 8 classes

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:College counselor here - I wish APS did a better job of educating families and students about what colleges care about, and this is. not. it.

a) Selective schools are looking at unweighted GPA and b) rigorous courseload. Dropping middle school classes to bring a 4.4 to a 4.5 or whatever is more likely to make a school think something went very wrong in 8th grade.

So much about the grade inflation at APS results from bones administrators have thrown to parents, over the course of decades, who think they're doing their kids a favor by trying to game this out. It truly will not make a positive difference if you drop As from a middle school transcript.

APS is not helpful at all with the college process. No guidance on how to fill out common app, have to push like hell to get transcripts and counselor letters in for early deadlines. It's embarassing.

I have a senior at W -L, and that has not been his experience at all. I have been impressed how much the counselor has added to the process and her responsiveness.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:College counselor here - I wish APS did a better job of educating families and students about what colleges care about, and this is. not. it.

a) Selective schools are looking at unweighted GPA and b) rigorous courseload. Dropping middle school classes to bring a 4.4 to a 4.5 or whatever is more likely to make a school think something went very wrong in 8th grade.

So much about the grade inflation at APS results from bones administrators have thrown to parents, over the course of decades, who think they're doing their kids a favor by trying to game this out. It truly will not make a positive difference if you drop As from a middle school transcript.

My kid is a junior, applying this fall, and 8th grade was mostly virtual. Took three classes that counted for high school (language, math, world history) but got terrible grades. Of course we are dropping them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:College counselor here - I wish APS did a better job of educating families and students about what colleges care about, and this is. not. it.

a) Selective schools are looking at unweighted GPA and b) rigorous courseload. Dropping middle school classes to bring a 4.4 to a 4.5 or whatever is more likely to make a school think something went very wrong in 8th grade.

So much about the grade inflation at APS results from bones administrators have thrown to parents, over the course of decades, who think they're doing their kids a favor by trying to game this out. It truly will not make a positive difference if you drop As from a middle school transcript.

APS is not helpful at all with the college process. No guidance on how to fill out common app, have to push like hell to get transcripts and counselor letters in for early deadlines. It's embarassing.

What graduating class? Which school? That seems to matter.

[Anonymous]

The only HS options in MS are math and world language. You need 4 math credits and 3 WL credits for an advanced diploma. Since we knew our child would have this easily from HS alone, we dropped all MS grades, including the A+ ones. Mathematically this is advantageous.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The only HS options in MS are math and world language. You need 4 math credits and 3 WL credits for an advanced diploma. Since we knew our child would have this easily from HS alone, we dropped all MS grades, including the A+ ones. Mathematically this is advantageous.

No, there is also world geography, which kids take in 8th grade by default but counts as a HS credit.