Parenting, or lack thereof?

[RedBirdie]

ha ha ha, in the DC area, not only are kids expected to excel academically, but be on student council, do a different after school sport each season (and make all county!), and volunteer at the local soup kitchen. Otherwise how are they eeeeeeeeveeeeeer going to get into Harvard?!

jesus christ.

[Mirax_Corran]

Well, being a student who gets bored in standard level classes and is, of her own free will, taking the most rigorous course of study offered at her school, it is possible for kids to excel in school and have social lives.

On the other hand, there's a senior at my school who has a 6.0 GPA, plays volleyball, started a summer camp for underprivilidged children (or something like that) and who just got a Morehead scholarship. But to the credit of the school and the students, they don't expect that of everyone.

[LaneWinree]

I suppose this is really only a problem in my area. The major universities in my state (particularly UW) are tossing out applications that don't show extracirricular. I know a number of four-point applicants from my school who werent even considered, while 3.75 students with four years of band or DECA or whatnot were accepted.

[Rogue SG-1]

Just curious, what are these points you keep talking about?
I'm assuming they're like a UAI, but I'm not sure..

[Astronut]

It's a grading system.
4.0=A
3.5=A-/B+
3=B
ect...
And some schools give extra points for honors and A.P. classes so you can get a 5.0 or a 6.0. But most schools consider a 4.0 to be a perfect grade.

[Rogue SG-1]

Alright.
Sounds simpler than what we use.

[LaneWinree]

My parents always told me to do the best I possibly could. I've taken hard, hard courses, and as such, I don't have a 4-point GPA. I'm a 3.75, and I'm okay with that. So long as I could prove I was doing well, my parents were happy.

And the 65 college credits I'll have by the time I graduate high school helps that cause.

[Jesina Dreis]

The point system becomes more complex when you throw in the fact that schools do things differently. In my high school, standard classes had the system above. But Advanced had "A" at 4.5, etc. and Honors had "A" at 5.0, etc. So I had a 4.27 GPA when I graduated.

And then Myra mentioned a 6.0...

EDIT: Now that I think of it, I was harder on myself than my mom was. Because of the classes I was taking, she didn't expect all A's. I expected them.

[Astronut]

My high school was one of those annoying ones that had the AP grades the same as the normal. But thankfully the college I applied to re-calculated all grades to a 4.0 scale. And I must admit, I hadn't heard of a 6.0

So how does an UAI scale work?

[Mirax_Corran]

Jes, at my school, honors and pre-IB are 5.0 A's and AP and IB are 6.0 A's, so to get a 6.0, one has to be in all IB or AP and get straight A's. It's not easy at ALL.

[Valin_Halcyon]

My mom is the overpushy type sometimes... just today, she said that she wants me to go into AP Chem instead of AP Comp Sci- never mind the fact that I love computer science and will likely do something related in college.

[Rogue SG-1]

Well, Nut, the UAI is University Admissions index and it is dead complicated.

First, they go from 1 to 100, and the lowest you can get into uni with is around 75.
for medicine and engineering and such, you generally need anywhere from 97 to 99.9.
Now, this is where it gets tricky.
Your UAI is made up of a combo of your scores from your best 3 majors, and the raw score of your SAT's.
You're ranked against everybody else in your age group. So with the scale (which sucks) You can have a whole class of people get 90% on a test, and yet somebody will still have to fail. Sucks, eh?
That really all I can explain.
Its kinda mind bending.

[Astronut]

The entire scale is curved? Ohh, that's nasty!

[RedBirdie]

lord, I do not miss high school. not. at. ALL. applying to grad school was a billion times less stressful.

I've said it a thousand times, and I'll say it again. THERE IS A COLLEGE OUT THERE FOR EVERYONE! even if it is some no-name school in the woods of Wisconsin (that school had some of the best professors known to man, I swear, and made me realize that pursuing what I love is more important than pursuing something "prestigious." And, despite what current wisdom is the DC area says, my life did not end because I went to said no-name school; I got into grad school, an excellent one, thanyouverymuch!) Mind you, I hated high school, slacked off to no end, and can't even tell you what my GPA was because I NEVER LOOKED IT UP.

[Mara]

Wow. lol

"Parenting" lol