3 ms·

That's all well and good, but the fact is "Honors" and "AP" classes are not well-defined as more difficult than the other classes. Also, it still penalizes stu

That's all well and good, but the fact is "Honors" and "AP" classes are not well-defined as more difficult than the other classes. Also, it still penalizes students taking larger course loads. I had a friend who was robbed of Valedictorian basically because their A in Choir was pulling down their GPA, while they was taking all of the same courses as the Valedictorian in addition to choir, and outperforming the Valedictorian. So you need to somehow penalize students who take weaker course loads, possibly by multiplying GPA by number of graded credits.

ShardPhoenix 16y ago
Australia has a good system (at least here in Victoria - different states vary). The ultimate goal is to produce a percentile ranking of students (as opposed to an absolute GPA), and to that end, classes are weighted by the quality of students taking them (as measured by a state-wide general test) and the final exams are all standardized. Plus, only the top 6 scoring subjects taken count (and only the top 4 scoring count fully), eliminating that issue.