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[quote=Anonymous]I was talking with you about this on the other thread.  Thanks for starting this one.

I think the Common App asks for the unweighted GPA, but I'm not totally positive about this. However, when the high school sends your kid's transcript in, some colleges will apply their own, proprietary weighting systems to the various classes your kid took. We will never know what these proprietary college weighting systems are. So the advice to the kid would still be, "take the hardest classes available," whether this is an AP class or an honors class.

Yes, the AP tests could potentially be a good reality check for comparing students across different schools. Kids don't send the AP scores in with the college application, however - APs are used after acceptance to get out of required classes. That said, when kids get 5's on the AP tests, they usually send them in with their applications. You can simply write, "AP US History - 5" without paying the College Board to forward the scores, and it seems colleges trust this, or at least it worked for DC (who did in fact earn good scores). But colleges don't require AP scores as part of the application.

The SAT II subject test scores could conceivably be a good measure for comparing kids from different schools, except that they usually aren't for most kids, IMO. The more selective colleges usually require two SAT II tests as part of the application. Lots of kids take SAT II Math 2 and English, in which case the test results look a lot like the regular SATs, with maybe some differences. If your kid is doing science or physics, the SAT II subject tests might be more helpful to colleges.[/quote]

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