The Weighted GPA: Useful or Inflationary?

[Ellie]

Wow, some people's schools have weird grading systems lol.

My school has a 5 for any honors or AP class A, and a 4 for any "regular" or concurrent enrollment class at the college. It's not too bad, and most of the top people have about a 4.5ish (for their entire high school GPA, not for individual quarters). There are a few problems, though. Not having concurrent enrollment classes count as a 5 discourages people from taking them so it won't hurt their GPA, even though Calculus 3 is a lot harder than AP Statistics and is probably a better class for a lot of the really smart people, but they take AP Stats instead to get the 5 points for their GPA instead of the 4. It also makes it so taking extra regular classes in addition to the honors/AP classes will water down your GPA. For example, at my school Yearbook Production class doesn't meet during the day, so it doesn't eat up a class spot in your schedule, and a lot of the staff takes it in addition to a full or close to full load of other classes during the day. I've been taking it since sophomore year (I'm a senior now) and the extra 2-3 quarter grades per year being 4's has watered down my GPA quite a bit. I still probably wouldn't be among the very top since I've gotten a few B's in my AP classes, but I have above a 4.0 so it did make a difference.

Of course I guess I should be grateful since it seems like a lot of you guys have a lot worse grade inflation/deflation going on from your weighting systems. Mine isn't really that bad, I like it besides the two things I mentioned :P

 

[Polis4rule]

It was pretty difficult to understand it (for some reason, don't ask me) and once I thought I had it (as in I could do all the homework questions and test questions without a problem), I got owned on the test. Thank God the next topic is one of my strengths (nuclear physics and quantum mechanics).

King Lear = good book
10 minute Oral on a passage = pretty awful especially when your teacher doesn't give you enough practice and feedback. I remember just being broken mentally and emotionally because of my last year's oral (english teacher told me that I did well afterwards, because I cut the whole day after that because i was pretty ticked off.)

The English IA's aren't bad at all. The IOP's were a breeze. The IOC's were a bit harder, but in my case we were given a passage at random, and we could've gottan a bs poem or some shit like that.

Now the Spanish (and other language B's), that was difficult. I haven't been taking Spanish long enough to be completely fluent in the language, and hell, I'm not even conversationally fluent. But I still did well in the IOP. That group oral is a bitch though. Fucking hated it.

And math IA's aren't that fun as well. Not worried about the Math HL exam, just the IA x.x

 

[th3anarchist]

The weighted gpa is just an incentive for kids to take higher level courses. It actually means nothing outside of the school you are currently in. It is like getting one of those little gold stars in kindergarden. They mean the world to you then, but after you go home, no one remembers how many stars you have. Colleges dont look at inflated GPAs, only the normal unweighted ones.