4 ms·

>I had a 4.7 GPA in high school. Funny story: my school wouldn't allow you to score over a 4.0 on anything. This meant that if, for example, you blew off a stu

by jgg 16y ago

>I had a 4.7 GPA in high school. Funny story: my school wouldn't allow you to score over a 4.0 on anything. This meant that if, for example, you blew off a stupid humanities class and got a 'B', you could never have a 4.0. This is great in theory, as most schools should ask for a "GPA out of a 4.0" number, and all would be grand. In practice, they didn't, so my official transcript from the school would always read '3.9', without giving any clue that the GPA's were capped!

steveklabnik 16y ago
Craaazy. My school gave you + .125 for honors, and + .25 for AP courses. This would be added after the division... a 4.0 for an A and a 3.0 for a B, both AP, ends up as ((4 + 3) / 2) + (.25 + .25) = 4.0. Oh, and everyone over a 4.0 gets reported as valedictorian.
- sokoloff 16y ago
  The math can't possibly work out that way (or your school isn't attempting to report anything remotely useful as a GPA). Get straight Bs and take 4 AP classes or 8 honors classes over your 4-year career and get a 4.0? I call BS.
  - steveklabnik 16y ago
    > (or your school isn't attempting to report anything remotely useful as a GPA) That is correct. > Get straight Bs and take 4 AP classes or 8 honors classes over your 4-year career and get a 4.0? I call BS. This is exactly what I did. I took all honors courses and did well in all of them. Oh, so I found my school handbook, if you'd like to see. Apparently they changed the addition to 0.06 and .12. It's on page 27: http://freeport.k12.pa.us/srhigh/FSD%20Student%20Handbook.pdf http://freeport.k12.pa.us/srhigh/FSD%20Student%20Handbook.pd...
    - sokoloff 16y ago
      Wow. You are correct, and I apologize for calling BS on you. That system is appalling. I call BS on your school system... :)
      - steveklabnik 16y ago
        No big deal. It _is_ incredibly ridiculous. Also, see the post by jfbillingsley above. he's a friend of mine. At least I got good things because of my school's terrible grading...
- jfbillingsley 16y ago
  Oh, mine was pretty neat too. We didn't have a 4.0 scale. It wasn't a 5.0 scale either.. it was just kind of arbitrary. The AP and honors courses had a higher "weight" (1.1 or 1.2 instead of the normal 1.0). So it was possible to get i.e. 4.8 if you took four AP courses. But here's the kicker: if you took other 1-weighted courses, they'd bring your GPA _down_. So it was possible to take 12 courses, ace them all, and get a LOWER GPA than someone who took the bare minimum number of courses. This happened to me.
snikolov 16y ago
Speaking of high school grade systems, my school had grades out of 100. Talk about unnecessary competitiveness (both with yourself and others). I obsessed over getting 97s and 98s rather than 94s and 95s. While we weren't officially ranked, it was well known that out of 700-800 students in your class, a 98 average put you in the top 5, and a 94 put you somewhere in the top 100-200. Because the school released college admissions statistics (in the format of GPA | SAT | accepted/rejected/waitlist), you could see that you have empirically little chance of getting into Harvard with that 94, but a very very good chance with that 98. That said, most people were generally very smart, passionate and inspiring people to be around. They actually cared about at least some subset of what they were learning. But a lot of the work was pure grind, and to impose that on a bunch of smart creative people is a shame.

by jgg 16y ago

steveklabnik 16y ago

Craaazy. My school gave you + .125 for honors, and + .25 for AP courses. This would be added after the division... a 4.0 for an A and a 3.0 for a B, both AP, ends up as ((4 + 3) / 2) + (.25 + .25) = 4.0. Oh, and everyone over a 4.0 gets reported as valedictorian.

sokoloff 16y ago
The math can't possibly work out that way (or your school isn't attempting to report anything remotely useful as a GPA). Get straight Bs and take 4 AP classes or 8 honors classes over your 4-year career and get a 4.0? I call BS.
- steveklabnik 16y ago
  > (or your school isn't attempting to report anything remotely useful as a GPA) That is correct. > Get straight Bs and take 4 AP classes or 8 honors classes over your 4-year career and get a 4.0? I call BS. This is exactly what I did. I took all honors courses and did well in all of them. Oh, so I found my school handbook, if you'd like to see. Apparently they changed the addition to 0.06 and .12. It's on page 27: http://freeport.k12.pa.us/srhigh/FSD%20Student%20Handbook.pdf http://freeport.k12.pa.us/srhigh/FSD%20Student%20Handbook.pd...
  - sokoloff 16y ago
    Wow. You are correct, and I apologize for calling BS on you. That system is appalling. I call BS on your school system... :)
    - steveklabnik 16y ago
      No big deal. It _is_ incredibly ridiculous. Also, see the post by jfbillingsley above. he's a friend of mine. At least I got good things because of my school's terrible grading...
jfbillingsley 16y ago
Oh, mine was pretty neat too. We didn't have a 4.0 scale. It wasn't a 5.0 scale either.. it was just kind of arbitrary. The AP and honors courses had a higher "weight" (1.1 or 1.2 instead of the normal 1.0). So it was possible to get i.e. 4.8 if you took four AP courses. But here's the kicker: if you took other 1-weighted courses, they'd bring your GPA _down_. So it was possible to take 12 courses, ace them all, and get a LOWER GPA than someone who took the bare minimum number of courses. This happened to me.

snikolov 16y ago

Speaking of high school grade systems, my school had grades out of 100. Talk about unnecessary competitiveness (both with yourself and others). I obsessed over getting 97s and 98s rather than 94s and 95s. While we weren't officially ranked, it was well known that out of 700-800 students in your class, a 98 average put you in the top 5, and a 94 put you somewhere in the top 100-200. Because the school released college admissions statistics (in the format of GPA | SAT | accepted/rejected/waitlist), you could see that you have empirically little chance of getting into Harvard with that 94, but a very very good chance with that 98. That said, most people were generally very smart, passionate and inspiring people to be around. They actually cared about at least some subset of what they were learning. But a lot of the work was pure grind, and to impose that on a bunch of smart creative people is a shame.