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We understand the predicament that most good high schools are in. Their kids want to go to highly selective colleges and their parents are paying attention to the GPAs that are required to make that happen. So what’s easier for high schools? Keeping a tight grip on the average GPA so it doesn’t get too high, or handing out enough A’s to avoid angry calls from parents? Is it easier for them to weight honors and AP courses with multipliers to get kids’ weighted GPAs over 4.0 or avoid weighting and let kids take advanced courses just for the sake of the rigor? You probably already know the answer.
GPA-friendly policies among high schools are taking away the ability for top kids to truly differentiate
The problem with these GPA-friendly policies, however, is that high schools are taking away the ability for top kids to truly differentiate at their high schools, which makes it harder for highly selective colleges to choose them. This is becoming especially problematic as test-optional admissions become the norm. In fact, these high school policies may have been justified in the test-mandatory days. Give lots of kids A’s and then let the SAT score separate them from one another. Now, it’s created the need for top students to not just perform well at what their high schools offer, but also pursue academic differentiation elsewhere.
Consider a highly-rated public school in Silicon Valley that will remain nameless. We work with a number of kids from this school, which is full of children of high-powered parents who expect their kids to go to top colleges. In one recent graduating class of about 600, almost 10% had a perfect, unweighted GPA of 4.0 after junior year. Another 60% had a GPA of 3.5 to 3.99. In this class, only 15% of kids had a GPA below 3.0. This high school doesn’t rank kids (how could they?). That’s a lot of kids for the top colleges to make distinctions among. It wouldn’t be unreasonable for parents to think that their perfect GPA student had a chance at every top college. Yet this school sends nowhere near 60 students a year to elite colleges. And what about that vast middle of students with an A- average? What are their chances at elite colleges, who typically read applications from a single high school at the same time?
Consider another top public school on the Main Line near Philadelphia. At this unnamed high school, the sin is weighting the GPA in virtually every way imaginable. The school hands out “A+” grades that come with a 4.3 to add to the GPA “unweighted.” Then they weight for honors (4.8 for an A+) and then weight again for AP classes (5.3 for an A+). The result is artificially high weighted GPAs among virtually everyone. In a class of about 400, a full 25% of the class has a GPA above 4.0. Worse, these GPAs often reflect high grades in non-core classes like Yoga and Art, which makes parents happy at first blush (“my kid has a 4.3 GPA”). But colleges typically strip out A+’s and Honors and AP weighting and often remove non-core classes from the calculation during the admissions process. Suddenly that GPA goes from 4.3 to 3.6 and parents have no idea. Of course, this school doesn’t rank students either, which helps the masses but not those at the top. When their kids don’t get into the top schools everyone is shocked. If only they did what most elite private high schools do, which is to keep GPAs under control (while still not ranking) and not weight for rigorous courses, directing kids to take them based on ability and interest.
At schools like these in Silicon Valley and the Main Line, it’s even more important for kids to stand out beyond their GPAs, but most parents don’t know this. They are lulled to sleep by the GPA which they tend not to see in the context of the entire class. It certainly makes life easier for the high schools, who don’t have to hear from parents about their kid getting a B, or having a middling GPA. But for kids who are qualified for highly selective colleges, it’s not great that they don’t have a way to differentiate. That’s why it is more important than ever, especially as test-optional admissions become standard, to tell a great story and prove your academic narrative beyond what is going on at your high school.
