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A friend of my son graduated last year with a 4.2 weighted GPA and was not even in the top 10% of her class of about 650 kids. My kids attended her school for a couple of years, until we moved. It is a very difficult, large suburban high school. It's located in an area where many of the families are very highly educated and stress academics above everything. We actually knew kids there that were sent to tutoring classes and improvement courses such as Kaplan or Kumon by there parents if they scored below a 95 on any paper or test. At our house a 95 was cause for celebration!
When we began visiting with college admissions people and they learned that our son had attend that high school and had a 3.8 we were told that it was in fact a very difficult school and that it would be taken into consideration.
I had a GPA north of 4.0 in high school. There were only 5 of us.
Our undergraduate class was only about 400, though. If 70 people got 4.0 or above..that would certainly be strange.
On the other hand, the high school that my siblings went to had like 40 "Valedictorians." (They named anyone with a 4.0 a valedictorian..lol..it was one of those schools.) Their graduating classes tended to be around 300....so I immediately suspected grade inflation. Not saying it occurred...just saying it was suspicious.
DS has a weighted 4.0 GPA and he's barely in the top 25% of his class (<400 students per class). The issue isn't grade inflation, I think the classes could be more challenging but it's a magnet school so my expectations are higher. It's not like they get fluff work now, I just think the students could do more...at least I know mine could. Very few of the classes are below honors level and with many AP classes available I'd expect lots of kids with 4.0 weighted. Still, it's frustrating to me that a kid who doesn't always do his best still ends up with a 4.0...I worked my fanny off for a 3.5, lol.
DD will likely be at the top of her class with something higher than a 4.0. They have honors classes but no AP. Instead of AP courses are college level and she'll have a separate GPA for those classes.
So, I guess it depends on the school and the students. For an average school I'd not expect that many 4.0's but for magnet schools I don't think it's that uncommon.
DS has a weighted 4.0 GPA and he's barely in the top 25% of his class (<400 students per class). The issue isn't grade inflation, I think the classes could be more challenging but it's a magnet school so my expectations are higher. It's not like they get fluff work now, I just think the students could do more...at least I know mine could. Very few of the classes are below honors level and with many AP classes available I'd expect lots of kids with 4.0 weighted. Still, it's frustrating to me that a kid who doesn't always do his best still ends up with a 4.0...I worked my fanny off for a 3.5, lol.
DD will likely be at the top of her class with something higher than a 4.0. They have honors classes but no AP. Instead of AP courses are college level and she'll have a separate GPA for those classes.
So, I guess it depends on the school and the students. For an average school I'd not expect that many 4.0's but for magnet schools I don't think it's that uncommon.
My school is a public magnet and even for our AP classes and other college courses we do not weight. Therefore no one gets a 4.0.
As for the OP, I will ask again. Is it one year of 70 4.0s or is that the norm each year?
My school is a public magnet and even for our AP classes and other college courses we do not weight. Therefore no one gets a 4.0.
As for the OP, I will ask again. Is it one year of 70 4.0s or is that the norm each year?
It sounds like it is the norm. I don't know much about the 70/4.0 school, I was just talking to someone in passing and the comment was made that the kids in our high school must not be as smart as the kids in that high school because we only had 2 kids with 4.0's (no grade weighting here so 4.0 is as high as you can get). My though was that their school wasn't pushing the kids hard enough if that many had 4.0's. I know that our top kids are going to some pretty impressive schools so I know that the the school is well respected (Berkley, MIT, 3 to Notre Dame, U of Illinois for engineering, Northwestern, U of M IT, Julliard, Duke, just to name a few that I know of). This is just a suburban public high school.
Good question, wish I could find some hard and fast figures on that.
I was just saying that in my kids program a 4.0 is more or less a B average and is fairly common, so when you ask about 70 kids with a 4.0 my thinking is that it really depends on circumstances.
As far as the 5.0 I would not be at all surprised to find a large number of students in this program that do have a perfect 5.0 because it's designed to attract the high achievers, out of a pool of 150k students. Not a stretch to think that several dozen students could pull a 5.0 under those (admittedly unusual) circumstances.
It might be difficult or even impossible to achieve a 5.0 at some schools. That would require that ALL courses are honors level or higher and/or enough AP courses to compensate for the 4.0 courses that are required. FE, there is no honors PE so right there you can't get a 5.0 unless you have courses worth more than 5.0. I can't remember off the top of my head but several other courses are not offered at an honors level and all worth 4.0 max making it very difficult (if not impossible) to get a perfect 5.0.
The number of students in that senior class is important here. Absent of a massive amount of kids in this grade, I think something fishy is going on.
We were weighed based on being college-prep and AP classwork. We got no extra points for AP classes but you had to have taken the classes. If there was any sort of tie then ACT test scores were used to determine a winner. If those were the same then it was based on junior high classes.
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