How much of a bump is worth dropping middle school grades for?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP I don't know how the MS grades bring the GPA down, that seems counter-intuitive to their ever having been included. But yes, if the GPA goes up when they're removed, the school is offering to do that for a good reason.

Because some of them are unweighted.

Remove them. Colleges will figure out that she took the math and language because how else would she have gotten to Alg 2 and Spanish 3?

[Anonymous]

What is the downside?

[Anonymous]

Doesn’t the university recalculate the grades anyway? Seems silly that you are focused on the gpa that isn’t much different. They aren’t going to focus on your middle school grades.

[Anonymous]

There's no inherent value to having the MS grades on the HS transcript. So the sole determinant is what happens to GPA if they're dropped. Since your DC's GPA would be a smidge higher without them, drop them. We did this for our DC who graduated HS in 2022 and it may have been make or break for his college admissions (MS grades included several Bs in a world language.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Doesn’t the university recalculate the grades anyway? Seems silly that you are focused on the gpa that isn’t much different. They aren’t going to focus on your middle school grades.

Not OP, but this came up bc the HS met with juniors yesterday and told them of this option. I calculated the weighted difference and it’s about . 04. Our private counselor said not to worry about it. The school doesn’t rank students anyway.

[Anonymous]

Of course remove them.

[Anonymous]

When colleges recalculate grades, is that after the application has made the first cut? Like, would a 4.27 vs a 4.22 matter at all or no b/c those are all As anyway?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP I don't know how the MS grades bring the GPA down, that seems counter-intuitive to their ever having been included. But yes, if the GPA goes up when they're removed, the school is offering to do that for a good reason.

Because some of them are unweighted.

Remove them. Colleges will figure out that she took the math and language because how else would she have gotten to Alg 2 and Spanish 3?

That doesn't make sense. Only the weighted MS grade, for HS level courses are included on a HS transcript.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP I don't know how the MS grades bring the GPA down, that seems counter-intuitive to their ever having been included. But yes, if the GPA goes up when they're removed, the school is offering to do that for a good reason.

Because some of them are unweighted.

Remove them. Colleges will figure out that she took the math and language because how else would she have gotten to Alg 2 and Spanish 3?

That doesn't make sense. Only the weighted MS grade, for HS level courses are included on a HS transcript.

Are you in APS? I’m pretty sure all classes count towards weighted GPA. So, those MS ones that can’t be weighted are included.

[Anonymous]

This is another weird difference from public and private. All of these classes would be considered middle school classes and left off the transcript entirely.

[Anonymous]

Weighted GPA is meaningless to colleges.

Do you think they are that stupid, and if you do, why would you want to send your kid to a place run by idiots?

[Anonymous]

Dropping A's from a HS transcript for a .05 GPA difference? Five Hundredths of a point...... Just when I think I've seen it all. Your child should be proud of taking such rigor in MS and continued in HS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Dropping A's from a HS transcript for a .05 GPA difference? Five Hundredths of a point...... Just when I think I've seen it all. Your child should be proud of taking such rigor in MS and continued in HS.

This was what we were told. It's irritating when you look on Naviance and see GPAs that aren't possible w/o dropping MS grades, but I don't think it really matters in the grand scheme of things. I also think APS shouldn't include them in the GPA calculation. It's find to leave them on the transcript if they are all As, but it shouldn't water down the weighted GPA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Weighted GPA is meaningless to colleges.

Do you think they are that stupid, and if you do, why would you want to send your kid to a place run by idiots?

Talk about a totally ill-informed, sweeping generalization. They mean a TON to many colleges you numbskull.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Weighted GPA is meaningless to colleges.

Do you think they are that stupid, and if you do, why would you want to send your kid to a place run by idiots?

Talk about a totally ill-informed, sweeping generalization. They mean a TON to many colleges you numbskull.

How? Our APS HS only weights AP/IB classes and doesn't offer those to Freshman. An A- and an A+ are both a 4.0. There is nothing higher w/o the AP/IB boost. Another APS school does offer APs to Freshman. My friend's DC is in a private school that does offer APs, but doesn't weight them. Then, I see numbers from MoCo schools where even an honors class gets weight. There is no way to compare between the schools unless taking the UW or recalculating them.

As an APS parent, the only reason I can come up with removing the MS grades is if enough families make that choice that it makes my DC's weighted GPA look lower in comparison even though every single grade is an A. The kid who dropped MS grades wasn't a better student.