Any uva ED rejects who got into better/icy schools during RD?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Student was never going to Brown or Georgetown. Or GW due to cost. Parents were limiting attendance to instate Virginia schools. Just being sneaky about it.

Wrong.

Brown’s average admit GPA is 3.9 and 4.3 for weighted.

Yale and Princeton cite 3.9 as their average incoming GPA.

It’s the crazy publics—-MoCO with their 5.0 scale and some Nova schools with unlimited AP courses (which the kids then can’t score a 4 or 5 at the end of the year on the exam).

What am I missing? You are conflating weighted with unweighted grades. The average weighted grade at an Ivy is not a 3.9.

And it's not above a 4.3 either!! That's my point. If you have an unweighted 4.0 with a minimum of 6-8 AP courses--you are more than fine for the top 10 schools. At UVA a kid like that would be cutoff, even with high scores because of the serious grade inflation in VA public schools (and multiple chances to retake exams and bring grades up--not realistic) and the need to be a grind and take 12-15 AP courses even when you can't pass the AP exams for them. That's the kind of student that ends up there.

NP. FCPS certainly has some funky grading policies post-covid, but the impact of their policies on high acheiving students, the kind who would get into UVA, IMO is negligible. Unless the policy has changed since last year, retake grades max out at an 80%, even if a kid's score is 100%. Kids with high GPAs aren't typically the ones getting 80% on assessments and then pulling As in the classes.

Also grade inflation is not the same thing as grade weighting. Just because you hear a student has a 4.3 GPA, that isn't inflation per se, that's weighting. In FCPS, to get into UVA, you have to be amongst the strongest students in your school. At Langley HS last year that GPA hovered around a 4.5. That's no different than local privates who might grade on a 4.0 scale.

UVA also wants kids to take the most rigorous course load, which does lead to kids cramming in APs in FCPS. Which sucks.

Kids who are out sick always get to retake tests, they turn a zero into a not-zero.

Kids who don’t like their SAT score can retake no excuse needed all they like.

Teachers love to give out “practice tests” and “open book tests” to high performers.

How about grading curves where everyone failed the test but will you look at that B and A for everyone. I personally had those in AP classes.

The real problem here is that if everyone can retake like that then what’s special about their kids - that they are great test takers - becomes meaningless.

By allowing infinite bites at the apple and giving the answers for corrections, every snowflake looks identical. There are no longer different.

This is why the college application process has become so crazy and there are so many more applicants at every school.

Scores and grades pre-inflation era--used to weed out kids from applying to every school out there. Kids with scores and gpas nowhere in range for a university used to not apply. There were differences in applicants. Now everyone looks identical. You will have 250 out of 650 kids at a HS with above a 4.0 GPA, taking identical classes and then when not submitting scores---how are they distinguished?

We give everyone single kid a trophy now, the true superstars no longer look any different from the masses.

Maybe your superstar isn't the special snowflake you thought they were. Take all that free time from Acing all the tests the first time, and do something meaningfully impressive with it.

He buries the real problem deep in the block of text.

TOO MANY APPLICATIONS TO THE SCHOOLS LARLA WANTS TO GO TO.

Everyone else should just self select away from MIT or get worse grades on purpose so she can go like she deserves.

It’s just not fair all these other people are qualified too, must be something wrong with the grading.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Student was never going to Brown or Georgetown. Or GW due to cost. Parents were limiting attendance to instate Virginia schools. Just being sneaky about it.

Wrong.

Brown’s average admit GPA is 3.9 and 4.3 for weighted.

Yale and Princeton cite 3.9 as their average incoming GPA.

It’s the crazy publics—-MoCO with their 5.0 scale and some Nova schools with unlimited AP courses (which the kids then can’t score a 4 or 5 at the end of the year on the exam).

What am I missing? You are conflating weighted with unweighted grades. The average weighted grade at an Ivy is not a 3.9.

And it's not above a 4.3 either!! That's my point. If you have an unweighted 4.0 with a minimum of 6-8 AP courses--you are more than fine for the top 10 schools. At UVA a kid like that would be cutoff, even with high scores because of the serious grade inflation in VA public schools (and multiple chances to retake exams and bring grades up--not realistic) and the need to be a grind and take 12-15 AP courses even when you can't pass the AP exams for them. That's the kind of student that ends up there.

NP. FCPS certainly has some funky grading policies post-covid, but the impact of their policies on high acheiving students, the kind who would get into UVA, IMO is negligible. Unless the policy has changed since last year, retake grades max out at an 80%, even if a kid's score is 100%. Kids with high GPAs aren't typically the ones getting 80% on assessments and then pulling As in the classes.

Also grade inflation is not the same thing as grade weighting. Just because you hear a student has a 4.3 GPA, that isn't inflation per se, that's weighting. In FCPS, to get into UVA, you have to be amongst the strongest students in your school. At Langley HS last year that GPA hovered around a 4.5. That's no different than local privates who might grade on a 4.0 scale.

UVA also wants kids to take the most rigorous course load, which does lead to kids cramming in APs in FCPS. Which sucks.

Correct on the retake policy, it’s impossible to get an A on that exam retake.

It’s designed to take a failing grade and turn it into a merely lousy one.

An 80 under the FCPS grading rubric is a B-

I think people applying to UVA or other highly selective schools should not be concerned about too many wildly inflated B minuses and C pluses floating around out there.

Not true. At my FCPS high school, kids are able to retake up to a an A.

Thank you for being honest. It’s the same way at MCP. And frankly, I think that these colleges and universities are catching on and Virginia and Maryland are not the only states that have this practice of endless retakes. Illinois has it also. But no midterm exams, no final exams endless retakes, no penalty for not being at school, when you’re looking at high GPA’s from schools like this and then high GPA is from other institutions that don’t have this practice. I’m wondering if maybe the schools aren’t catching on.

There are no midterms or finals? Or am I misreading that? I do think all of that is unusual, as many school districts are still pretty traditional. That said, I’m not sure you’ll be penalized. Just don’t let colleges know 😉

DP: my MCPS kid must be unlucky. He is taking 4 AP classes and there is a midterm in each class. One teacher doesn’t allow retakes (this is his second year taking a class with this teacher). She is also known for grade deflation. The other three allow retakes but you can’t earn a grade higher than a B. He is a junior and seems to get the teachers that don’t accept late assignments after the close dates (7-10 days) and limit retakes to a few assignments a quarter. He complains that his friends are in easier sections and their parents allow them to switch classes or drop down a level. But I think it is good for him. Do colleges know that the grading policies are all over the place in MCPS, even within the same high schools? Probably not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Student was never going to Brown or Georgetown. Or GW due to cost. Parents were limiting attendance to instate Virginia schools. Just being sneaky about it.

Wrong.

Brown’s average admit GPA is 3.9 and 4.3 for weighted.

Yale and Princeton cite 3.9 as their average incoming GPA.

It’s the crazy publics—-MoCO with their 5.0 scale and some Nova schools with unlimited AP courses (which the kids then can’t score a 4 or 5 at the end of the year on the exam).

What am I missing? You are conflating weighted with unweighted grades. The average weighted grade at an Ivy is not a 3.9.

And it's not above a 4.3 either!! That's my point. If you have an unweighted 4.0 with a minimum of 6-8 AP courses--you are more than fine for the top 10 schools. At UVA a kid like that would be cutoff, even with high scores because of the serious grade inflation in VA public schools (and multiple chances to retake exams and bring grades up--not realistic) and the need to be a grind and take 12-15 AP courses even when you can't pass the AP exams for them. That's the kind of student that ends up there.

NP. FCPS certainly has some funky grading policies post-covid, but the impact of their policies on high acheiving students, the kind who would get into UVA, IMO is negligible. Unless the policy has changed since last year, retake grades max out at an 80%, even if a kid's score is 100%. Kids with high GPAs aren't typically the ones getting 80% on assessments and then pulling As in the classes.

Also grade inflation is not the same thing as grade weighting. Just because you hear a student has a 4.3 GPA, that isn't inflation per se, that's weighting. In FCPS, to get into UVA, you have to be amongst the strongest students in your school. At Langley HS last year that GPA hovered around a 4.5. That's no different than local privates who might grade on a 4.0 scale.

UVA also wants kids to take the most rigorous course load, which does lead to kids cramming in APs in FCPS. Which sucks.

Correct on the retake policy, it’s impossible to get an A on that exam retake.

It’s designed to take a failing grade and turn it into a merely lousy one.

An 80 under the FCPS grading rubric is a B-

I think people applying to UVA or other highly selective schools should not be concerned about too many wildly inflated B minuses and C pluses floating around out there.

Not true. At my FCPS high school, kids are able to retake up to a an A.

Thank you for being honest. It’s the same way at MCP. And frankly, I think that these colleges and universities are catching on and Virginia and Maryland are not the only states that have this practice of endless retakes. Illinois has it also. But no midterm exams, no final exams endless retakes, no penalty for not being at school, when you’re looking at high GPA’s from schools like this and then high GPA is from other institutions that don’t have this practice. I’m wondering if maybe the schools aren’t catching on.

There are no midterms or finals? Or am I misreading that? I do think all of that is unusual, as many school districts are still pretty traditional. That said, I’m not sure you’ll be penalized. Just don’t let colleges know 😉

DP: my MCPS kid must be unlucky. He is taking 4 AP classes and there is a midterm in each class. One teacher doesn’t allow retakes (this is his second year taking a class with this teacher). She is also known for grade deflation. The other three allow retakes but you can’t earn a grade higher than a B. He is a junior and seems to get the teachers that don’t accept late assignments after the close dates (7-10 days) and limit retakes to a few assignments a quarter. He complains that his friends are in easier sections and their parents allow them to switch classes or drop down a level. But I think it is good for him. Do colleges know that the grading policies are all over the place in MCPS, even within the same high schools? Probably not.

My MCPS kid also had one like this. Only allowed 1/4 points on retake, and those were limited. Used AP scale where 70% should equal a 5 but was just a 70% in the grade book. No many projects. Labs were very specific.

[Anonymous]

OP, I'm guessing she didn't apply to Penn State early in the admission cycle. She would have heard by now.

Did she get merit $ from Pitt?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just trying to keep dd hopes up
She is so bummed

FCPS
Unhooked
4.3 gpa ( 12 ap and de)
1500 sat
Varsity athlete
Decent extra curriculars
Full pay if it makes any diff

Other schools applied:
Georgetown (reach)
Tech (target??)
Penn state (target)
Pitt (safety )
Brown (reach)
Penn (reach)
George washington(target)
Mason (safety)
Vcu(safety)

She'll get into Penn State (should be a safety), GW and Tech. Georgetown, Brown and Penn are reaches for anyone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Student was never going to Brown or Georgetown. Or GW due to cost. Parents were limiting attendance to instate Virginia schools. Just being sneaky about it.

Wrong.

Brown’s average admit GPA is 3.9 and 4.3 for weighted.

Yale and Princeton cite 3.9 as their average incoming GPA.

It’s the crazy publics—-MoCO with their 5.0 scale and some Nova schools with unlimited AP courses (which the kids then can’t score a 4 or 5 at the end of the year on the exam).

What am I missing? You are conflating weighted with unweighted grades. The average weighted grade at an Ivy is not a 3.9.

And it's not above a 4.3 either!! That's my point. If you have an unweighted 4.0 with a minimum of 6-8 AP courses--you are more than fine for the top 10 schools. At UVA a kid like that would be cutoff, even with high scores because of the serious grade inflation in VA public schools (and multiple chances to retake exams and bring grades up--not realistic) and the need to be a grind and take 12-15 AP courses even when you can't pass the AP exams for them. That's the kind of student that ends up there.

NP. FCPS certainly has some funky grading policies post-covid, but the impact of their policies on high acheiving students, the kind who would get into UVA, IMO is negligible. Unless the policy has changed since last year, retake grades max out at an 80%, even if a kid's score is 100%. Kids with high GPAs aren't typically the ones getting 80% on assessments and then pulling As in the classes.

Also grade inflation is not the same thing as grade weighting. Just because you hear a student has a 4.3 GPA, that isn't inflation per se, that's weighting. In FCPS, to get into UVA, you have to be amongst the strongest students in your school. At Langley HS last year that GPA hovered around a 4.5. That's no different than local privates who might grade on a 4.0 scale.

UVA also wants kids to take the most rigorous course load, which does lead to kids cramming in APs in FCPS. Which sucks.

Correct on the retake policy, it’s impossible to get an A on that exam retake.

It’s designed to take a failing grade and turn it into a merely lousy one.

An 80 under the FCPS grading rubric is a B-

I think people applying to UVA or other highly selective schools should not be concerned about too many wildly inflated B minuses and C pluses floating around out there.

Not true. At my FCPS high school, kids are able to retake up to a an A.

At Chantilly HS, the policy used to be "retake up to an 80." That policy changed this year to "retake up to a 90." But students can only retake tests once (not endlessly) and sometimes only choose to retake one assessment per quarter (English classes).

So it’s basically different at each school and even within a school. There’s no way that Admissions Officers would know how it varies between schools.

Yes, but a UVA admissions officer will generally be comparing Chantilly HS students with other Chantilly HS students (and Oakton students with each other, and Langley students with each other, and so on). I do not think it is that much of an issue. So many students apply to UVA from individual FCPS high schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Student was never going to Brown or Georgetown. Or GW due to cost. Parents were limiting attendance to instate Virginia schools. Just being sneaky about it.

Wrong.

Brown’s average admit GPA is 3.9 and 4.3 for weighted.

Yale and Princeton cite 3.9 as their average incoming GPA.

It’s the crazy publics—-MoCO with their 5.0 scale and some Nova schools with unlimited AP courses (which the kids then can’t score a 4 or 5 at the end of the year on the exam).

What am I missing? You are conflating weighted with unweighted grades. The average weighted grade at an Ivy is not a 3.9.

And it's not above a 4.3 either!! That's my point. If you have an unweighted 4.0 with a minimum of 6-8 AP courses--you are more than fine for the top 10 schools. At UVA a kid like that would be cutoff, even with high scores because of the serious grade inflation in VA public schools (and multiple chances to retake exams and bring grades up--not realistic) and the need to be a grind and take 12-15 AP courses even when you can't pass the AP exams for them. That's the kind of student that ends up there.

NP. FCPS certainly has some funky grading policies post-covid, but the impact of their policies on high acheiving students, the kind who would get into UVA, IMO is negligible. Unless the policy has changed since last year, retake grades max out at an 80%, even if a kid's score is 100%. Kids with high GPAs aren't typically the ones getting 80% on assessments and then pulling As in the classes.

Also grade inflation is not the same thing as grade weighting. Just because you hear a student has a 4.3 GPA, that isn't inflation per se, that's weighting. In FCPS, to get into UVA, you have to be amongst the strongest students in your school. At Langley HS last year that GPA hovered around a 4.5. That's no different than local privates who might grade on a 4.0 scale.

UVA also wants kids to take the most rigorous course load, which does lead to kids cramming in APs in FCPS. Which sucks.

This may be true at some FCPS schools, but not where I teach. Students can retake and pull their grades up to an A. It's decided by CT so it could vary depending on the class.

NP here. Well, your school is doing in wrong then. At my kid's school, there are retakes but you can't pull a failing grade up to an A that someone else earned the first time. Essays are written as a first draft, commented on, and kids re-write based on comments. Much like writing a paper/grant/article in the real world. For math/science, different teachers have different rules but most only allow half the points missed to be recovered after the re-take.

When I was in school, there were no re-takes. Guess what most kids did? Saw the red Xs on their test, the subpar grade and moved on to the next unit with little understanding of what they did wrong. And demoralized thinking they just "didn't get math" or whatever. School should be about learning, not just grades.

I'm guessing now though that all the posters here constantly screaming about grade inflation are either trolls who hate public schools or otherwise should talk to their schools about implementing change in the grading system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Student was never going to Brown or Georgetown. Or GW due to cost. Parents were limiting attendance to instate Virginia schools. Just being sneaky about it.

Wrong.

Brown’s average admit GPA is 3.9 and 4.3 for weighted.

Yale and Princeton cite 3.9 as their average incoming GPA.

It’s the crazy publics—-MoCO with their 5.0 scale and some Nova schools with unlimited AP courses (which the kids then can’t score a 4 or 5 at the end of the year on the exam).

What am I missing? You are conflating weighted with unweighted grades. The average weighted grade at an Ivy is not a 3.9.

And it's not above a 4.3 either!! That's my point. If you have an unweighted 4.0 with a minimum of 6-8 AP courses--you are more than fine for the top 10 schools. At UVA a kid like that would be cutoff, even with high scores because of the serious grade inflation in VA public schools (and multiple chances to retake exams and bring grades up--not realistic) and the need to be a grind and take 12-15 AP courses even when you can't pass the AP exams for them. That's the kind of student that ends up there.

NP. FCPS certainly has some funky grading policies post-covid, but the impact of their policies on high acheiving students, the kind who would get into UVA, IMO is negligible. Unless the policy has changed since last year, retake grades max out at an 80%, even if a kid's score is 100%. Kids with high GPAs aren't typically the ones getting 80% on assessments and then pulling As in the classes.

Also grade inflation is not the same thing as grade weighting. Just because you hear a student has a 4.3 GPA, that isn't inflation per se, that's weighting. In FCPS, to get into UVA, you have to be amongst the strongest students in your school. At Langley HS last year that GPA hovered around a 4.5. That's no different than local privates who might grade on a 4.0 scale.

UVA also wants kids to take the most rigorous course load, which does lead to kids cramming in APs in FCPS. Which sucks.

This may be true at some FCPS schools, but not where I teach. Students can retake and pull their grades up to an A. It's decided by CT so it could vary depending on the class.

NP here. Well, your school is doing in wrong then. At my kid's school, there are retakes but you can't pull a failing grade up to an A that someone else earned the first time. Essays are written as a first draft, commented on, and kids re-write based on comments. Much like writing a paper/grant/article in the real world. For math/science, different teachers have different rules but most only allow half the points missed to be recovered after the re-take.

When I was in school, there were no re-takes. Guess what most kids did? Saw the red Xs on their test, the subpar grade and moved on to the next unit with little understanding of what they did wrong. And demoralized thinking they just "didn't get math" or whatever. School should be about learning, not just grades.

I'm guessing now though that all the posters here constantly screaming about grade inflation are either trolls who hate public schools or otherwise should talk to their schools about implementing change in the grading system.

They don’t want school to be about learning.

They want school to be about the kind of competitions their kids are good at.

The point of a test is not to demonstrate mastery, it’s to demonstrate rank. A 99 is objectively better than a 98! Now you can properly sort everyone.

“Is a 99 different from a 98 in a statistically meaningful way?” Wrong question!

“Does a 99 show more actual mastery than a 98?” Wrong question!

“Does a 99 mean my kid gets the admissions offer and yours doesn’t?” Right question!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Student was never going to Brown or Georgetown. Or GW due to cost. Parents were limiting attendance to instate Virginia schools. Just being sneaky about it.

Wrong.

Brown’s average admit GPA is 3.9 and 4.3 for weighted.

Yale and Princeton cite 3.9 as their average incoming GPA.

It’s the crazy publics—-MoCO with their 5.0 scale and some Nova schools with unlimited AP courses (which the kids then can’t score a 4 or 5 at the end of the year on the exam).

What am I missing? You are conflating weighted with unweighted grades. The average weighted grade at an Ivy is not a 3.9.

And it's not above a 4.3 either!! That's my point. If you have an unweighted 4.0 with a minimum of 6-8 AP courses--you are more than fine for the top 10 schools. At UVA a kid like that would be cutoff, even with high scores because of the serious grade inflation in VA public schools (and multiple chances to retake exams and bring grades up--not realistic) and the need to be a grind and take 12-15 AP courses even when you can't pass the AP exams for them. That's the kind of student that ends up there.

NP. FCPS certainly has some funky grading policies post-covid, but the impact of their policies on high acheiving students, the kind who would get into UVA, IMO is negligible. Unless the policy has changed since last year, retake grades max out at an 80%, even if a kid's score is 100%. Kids with high GPAs aren't typically the ones getting 80% on assessments and then pulling As in the classes.

Also grade inflation is not the same thing as grade weighting. Just because you hear a student has a 4.3 GPA, that isn't inflation per se, that's weighting. In FCPS, to get into UVA, you have to be amongst the strongest students in your school. At Langley HS last year that GPA hovered around a 4.5. That's no different than local privates who might grade on a 4.0 scale.

UVA also wants kids to take the most rigorous course load, which does lead to kids cramming in APs in FCPS. Which sucks.

+100

We had grade weighting when I was in high school and Honors classes got a big bump. Difference was that out of a class of 275, only 30 kids were in the 1 honors section so only those kids got the bump. We were tracked early and those tracks added a few here and there but mostly stayed the same group of kids. Now, because there is free access to this weighted advantage if the student selects it (at least in FCPS), hundreds of kids get the bump and become much more hard to differentiate from each other.

Yes good old tracking where they picked who the special kids were in Kindergarten and they forevermore got the best classes and resources and grade enhancements.

Very easy to differentiate kids if most of them are kept away from opportunities.

Exactly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At our FCPS, you need a 4.4 and ED for UVA.

+1 the gpa is way low for FCPS

Are you talking aboyt 4.4 at ebd of senior year (which is what shows up on naviance) or 4.4 at time of ED application?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At our FCPS, you need a 4.4 and ED for UVA.

+1 the gpa is way low for FCPS

Are you talking aboyt 4.4 at ebd of senior year (which is what shows up on naviance) or 4.4 at time of ED application?

Stop parsing.

A 4.4 is a 4.4

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Student was never going to Brown or Georgetown. Or GW due to cost. Parents were limiting attendance to instate Virginia schools. Just being sneaky about it.

Wrong.

Brown’s average admit GPA is 3.9 and 4.3 for weighted.

Yale and Princeton cite 3.9 as their average incoming GPA.

It’s the crazy publics—-MoCO with their 5.0 scale and some Nova schools with unlimited AP courses (which the kids then can’t score a 4 or 5 at the end of the year on the exam).

What am I missing? You are conflating weighted with unweighted grades. The average weighted grade at an Ivy is not a 3.9.

And it's not above a 4.3 either!! That's my point. If you have an unweighted 4.0 with a minimum of 6-8 AP courses--you are more than fine for the top 10 schools. At UVA a kid like that would be cutoff, even with high scores because of the serious grade inflation in VA public schools (and multiple chances to retake exams and bring grades up--not realistic) and the need to be a grind and take 12-15 AP courses even when you can't pass the AP exams for them. That's the kind of student that ends up there.

NP. FCPS certainly has some funky grading policies post-covid, but the impact of their policies on high acheiving students, the kind who would get into UVA, IMO is negligible. Unless the policy has changed since last year, retake grades max out at an 80%, even if a kid's score is 100%. Kids with high GPAs aren't typically the ones getting 80% on assessments and then pulling As in the classes.

Also grade inflation is not the same thing as grade weighting. Just because you hear a student has a 4.3 GPA, that isn't inflation per se, that's weighting. In FCPS, to get into UVA, you have to be amongst the strongest students in your school. At Langley HS last year that GPA hovered around a 4.5. That's no different than local privates who might grade on a 4.0 scale.

UVA also wants kids to take the most rigorous course load, which does lead to kids cramming in APs in FCPS. Which sucks.

This may be true at some FCPS schools, but not where I teach. Students can retake and pull their grades up to an A. It's decided by CT so it could vary depending on the class.

NP here. Well, your school is doing in wrong then. At my kid's school, there are retakes but you can't pull a failing grade up to an A that someone else earned the first time. Essays are written as a first draft, commented on, and kids re-write based on comments. Much like writing a paper/grant/article in the real world. For math/science, different teachers have different rules but most only allow half the points missed to be recovered after the re-take.

When I was in school, there were no re-takes. Guess what most kids did? Saw the red Xs on their test, the subpar grade and moved on to the next unit with little understanding of what they did wrong. And demoralized thinking they just "didn't get math" or whatever. School should be about learning, not just grades.

I'm guessing now though that all the posters here constantly screaming about grade inflation are either trolls who hate public schools or otherwise should talk to their schools about implementing change in the grading system.

They don’t want school to be about learning.

They want school to be about the kind of competitions their kids are good at.

The point of a test is not to demonstrate mastery, it’s to demonstrate rank. A 99 is objectively better than a 98! Now you can properly sort everyone.

“Is a 99 different from a 98 in a statistically meaningful way?” Wrong question!

“Does a 99 show more actual mastery than a 98?” Wrong question!

“Does a 99 mean my kid gets the admissions offer and yours doesn’t?” Right question!

Total agree with the two PPs.

I was initially against any form of re-take -- WE didn't get that when we were in school! I was in the top 10 of my FCPS class and I did it the old fashioned way -- I scored high the first time. But you know what, I'm not sure I was really always learning, rather, I was a good test-prepper and could regurgitate information test by test.

I have come to see that giving kids another shot at a re-test is perhaps giving them another change to actually learn the information. And note -- you are not required to re-take nor does the class progression stop so that kids can re-take. These kids are putting in the time and effort to retake as they are still moving on to new material. I respect the kid that tries again vs shrugs, accepts that they didn't do well and doesn't bother trying.

Someone once gave the analogy with a trade school -- if you failed your welding test or didn't do quite was well as it should, you practice over and over until you can get it right. Why not give a kid a chance to practice that math over and over or that physics program or whatever.

Are schools for learning so that we can have an educated citizenry who can advance through more complicated material and chose a path of their liking? Or is it all a competition - the race to nowhere - a video game where the person with the most points "wins" - wins what exactly?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Student was never going to Brown or Georgetown. Or GW due to cost. Parents were limiting attendance to instate Virginia schools. Just being sneaky about it.

Wrong.

Brown’s average admit GPA is 3.9 and 4.3 for weighted.

Yale and Princeton cite 3.9 as their average incoming GPA.

It’s the crazy publics—-MoCO with their 5.0 scale and some Nova schools with unlimited AP courses (which the kids then can’t score a 4 or 5 at the end of the year on the exam).

What am I missing? You are conflating weighted with unweighted grades. The average weighted grade at an Ivy is not a 3.9.

And it's not above a 4.3 either!! That's my point. If you have an unweighted 4.0 with a minimum of 6-8 AP courses--you are more than fine for the top 10 schools. At UVA a kid like that would be cutoff, even with high scores because of the serious grade inflation in VA public schools (and multiple chances to retake exams and bring grades up--not realistic) and the need to be a grind and take 12-15 AP courses even when you can't pass the AP exams for them. That's the kind of student that ends up there.

NP. FCPS certainly has some funky grading policies post-covid, but the impact of their policies on high acheiving students, the kind who would get into UVA, IMO is negligible. Unless the policy has changed since last year, retake grades max out at an 80%, even if a kid's score is 100%. Kids with high GPAs aren't typically the ones getting 80% on assessments and then pulling As in the classes.

Also grade inflation is not the same thing as grade weighting. Just because you hear a student has a 4.3 GPA, that isn't inflation per se, that's weighting. In FCPS, to get into UVA, you have to be amongst the strongest students in your school. At Langley HS last year that GPA hovered around a 4.5. That's no different than local privates who might grade on a 4.0 scale.

UVA also wants kids to take the most rigorous course load, which does lead to kids cramming in APs in FCPS. Which sucks.

Correct on the retake policy, it’s impossible to get an A on that exam retake.

It’s designed to take a failing grade and turn it into a merely lousy one.

An 80 under the FCPS grading rubric is a B-

I think people applying to UVA or other highly selective schools should not be concerned about too many wildly inflated B minuses and C pluses floating around out there.

Not true. At my FCPS high school, kids are able to retake up to a an A.

At Chantilly HS, the policy used to be "retake up to an 80." That policy changed this year to "retake up to a 90." But students can only retake tests once (not endlessly) and sometimes only choose to retake one assessment per quarter (English classes).

So it’s basically different at each school and even within a school. There’s no way that Admissions Officers would know how it varies between schools.

No they know. The regional rep knows the background of each school. They also receive a school profile from the school which enables them to rank and compare students within the same school (you are competing against your own classmates when more than one applies to the same college)

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:At our FCPS, you need a 4.4 and ED for UVA.

+1 the gpa is way low for FCPS

Are you talking aboyt 4.4 at ebd of senior year (which is what shows up on naviance) or 4.4 at time of ED application?

Stop parsing.

A 4.4 is a 4.4

Actually, it isn’t but I can tell you don’t want to learn or even think so I’m not going to explain the obvious

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Student was never going to Brown or Georgetown. Or GW due to cost. Parents were limiting attendance to instate Virginia schools. Just being sneaky about it.

Wrong.

Brown’s average admit GPA is 3.9 and 4.3 for weighted.

Yale and Princeton cite 3.9 as their average incoming GPA.

It’s the crazy publics—-MoCO with their 5.0 scale and some Nova schools with unlimited AP courses (which the kids then can’t score a 4 or 5 at the end of the year on the exam).

What am I missing? You are conflating weighted with unweighted grades. The average weighted grade at an Ivy is not a 3.9.

And it's not above a 4.3 either!! That's my point. If you have an unweighted 4.0 with a minimum of 6-8 AP courses--you are more than fine for the top 10 schools. At UVA a kid like that would be cutoff, even with high scores because of the serious grade inflation in VA public schools (and multiple chances to retake exams and bring grades up--not realistic) and the need to be a grind and take 12-15 AP courses even when you can't pass the AP exams for them. That's the kind of student that ends up there.

NP. FCPS certainly has some funky grading policies post-covid, but the impact of their policies on high acheiving students, the kind who would get into UVA, IMO is negligible. Unless the policy has changed since last year, retake grades max out at an 80%, even if a kid's score is 100%. Kids with high GPAs aren't typically the ones getting 80% on assessments and then pulling As in the classes.

Also grade inflation is not the same thing as grade weighting. Just because you hear a student has a 4.3 GPA, that isn't inflation per se, that's weighting. In FCPS, to get into UVA, you have to be amongst the strongest students in your school. At Langley HS last year that GPA hovered around a 4.5. That's no different than local privates who might grade on a 4.0 scale.

UVA also wants kids to take the most rigorous course load, which does lead to kids cramming in APs in FCPS. Which sucks.

Correct on the retake policy, it’s impossible to get an A on that exam retake.

It’s designed to take a failing grade and turn it into a merely lousy one.

An 80 under the FCPS grading rubric is a B-

I think people applying to UVA or other highly selective schools should not be concerned about too many wildly inflated B minuses and C pluses floating around out there.

Not true. At my FCPS high school, kids are able to retake up to a an A.

At Chantilly HS, the policy used to be "retake up to an 80." That policy changed this year to "retake up to a 90." But students can only retake tests once (not endlessly) and sometimes only choose to retake one assessment per quarter (English classes).

So it’s basically different at each school and even within a school. There’s no way that Admissions Officers would know how it varies between schools.

No they know. The regional rep knows the background of each school. They also receive a school profile from the school which enables them to rank and compare students within the same school (you are competing against your own classmates when more than one applies to the same college)

Isn't there a way to look up the school profile? I thought that was public info.