If you take an advanced placement class, do you get an extra point for the grade. For instance does an A receive 5 points in an AP course?

(06-20-2013 06:32 PM)Dukester Wrote:  If you take an advanced placement class, do you get an extra point for the grade. For instance does an A receive 5 points in an AP course?

Yes, the A is 5 points in AP and for Honors classes in Henrico County. We have a son who just finished his junior year.

Hanover works the same way.

There's at least two tiers of grade weighting in Stafford & it was the same way where I grew up in West Point. There, it was 4.5 for an honors class A. 5 for an AP or DE class A.

An "A" should be 6 points for AP and 5 points for honors.

50 is the new 40, so 5.0 GPA is the new 4.0? Where do the poor schleps w/ a 2.5 go?

There is a move in Henrico to move the number back to 4.5 for an A instead of 5.

(06-20-2013 08:34 PM)olddawg Wrote:  50 is the new 40, so 5.0 GPA is the new 4.0? Where do the poor schleps w/ a 2.5 go?

George Mason? VCU?

Does anyone know if there's any validity to the rumor that a high school student with a 3.9 GPA was rejected from JMU?

(06-20-2013 08:34 PM)olddawg Wrote:  50 is the new 40, so 5.0 GPA is the new 4.0? Where do the poor schleps w/ a 2.5 go?

I'd say ODU but that'd be too easy.

(06-20-2013 08:45 PM)Ike N. Berry Wrote:  

(06-20-2013 08:34 PM)olddawg Wrote:  50 is the new 40, so 5.0 GPA is the new 4.0? Where do the poor schleps w/ a 2.5 go?

I'd say ODU but that'd be too easy.

But you would be right.

(06-20-2013 08:45 PM)Potomac Wrote:  

(06-20-2013 08:34 PM)olddawg Wrote:  50 is the new 40, so 5.0 GPA is the new 4.0? Where do the poor schleps w/ a 2.5 go?

George Mason? VCU?

Does anyone know if there's any validity to the rumor that a high school student with a 3.9 GPA was rejected from JMU?

That is not a rumor and it's not an isolated event. We have had 2 kids go through a good high school in the West End of Richmond (one will be a senior at JMU and the youngest a rising senior in high school). Over the last 4-6 years, JMU has gotten further away from GPA based on the issue with the weighted GPA. Strength of schedule has become the most dominating factor. The big question is whether the student is taking the most challenging curriculum available at the school. If a student is getting a 3.9 by taking classes that are not honors or AP, that student moves down the list at JMU. With 25,000 plus applications for 4,000 spots, kids with the weak 3.9 run a real risk of being rejected. The same rules apply at UVA, W&M, & VA Tech. There are other options for the weak 3.9. Those options include crushing the ACT or SAT, going to community college (or VCU, ODU, Mary Wash or CNU) for a year and transfer or go private (UR, W&L, Bridgewater, etc.).

(06-20-2013 06:32 PM)Dukester Wrote:  If you take an advanced placement class, do you get an extra point for the grade. For instance does an A receive 5 points in an AP course?

As you can see through this thread, it depends on the district. Different districts weigh things the way they want. Districts can stay with the 4.0 scale, they can give extra weight to honors and AP courses (but keep them equal to each other), or they can give extra-extra weight to AP courses. It's completely up to the district and they can change it at any time. This would be one of the reason colleges are depending less on GPA - it just gets too complicated to have to wade through all of the formulas of each district.

Fairfax county is 5.0 for an A in AP honors and 4.5 for an A in Honors. And it would be best to have at least 3.75 GPA in a challenging course load with decent test scores to assure JMU admission. VT is similar. 3.5 with same course load would be good for GMU and you can indeed get down to 3.0 or maybe a tad below that for ODU, Radford but they have to be decent classes. UVa gets up to 4.5+ with W&M slight under that.

My son ended up with a 3.9 and SAT at 1900 (1250 without writing) with a total of 7 AP classes. He got in at JMU early admission, GMU honors early admission, and VT regular decision, denied at W&M and UChicago, and wait listed at Villanova.

(06-21-2013 06:58 AM)JMU John Wrote:  Fairfax county is 5.0 for an A in AP honors and 4.5 for an A in Honors. And it would be best to have at least 3.75 GPA in a challenging course load with decent test scores to assure JMU admission. VT is similar. 3.5 with same course load would be good for GMU and you can indeed get down to 3.0 or maybe a tad below that for ODU, Radford but they have to be decent classes. UVa gets up to 4.5+ with W&M slight under that.

My son ended up with a 3.9 and SAT at 1900 (1250 without writing) with a total of 7 AP classes. He got in at JMU early admission, GMU honors early admission, and VT regular decision, denied at W&M and UChicago, and wait listed at Villanova.

Are these actual statistics or are you just pulling them out of your butt?

At least up until a few years ago, JMU was much more focused on schedule difficulty than VT was. VT you could take easy classes, but have a 3.8 and get in easy. JMU wouldn't have let you in unless you had taken some more difficult classes. Not sure if that's changed since then, but JMU for awhile has been much more interested in students that challenge themselves. Tech was always more interested in making themselves look nice with a higher avg entrance gpa score even though the quality wasn't there.

back in 2000, JMU was my reach and VT a match. JMU looked way harder at strength of curriculum, which helped someone like me that went to a Privatye school and got ZERO weighting for AP/Honors. I had 3.0 with all honors/AP...pissed me off to watch the public school kids rocking a 4.0+ for getting the exact same grades I did.

I did not get in to JMU because of my GPA. I attribute my acceptance into JMU to the fact that I was the EIC of my HS newspaper and had strong SAT scores. Apparently that's a pretty big deal ... but I also had a ton of AP courses, and I think my GPA was weighted up because Fairfax County, at least at the time, only gave .5 points for AP courses, which I found out pretty quickly my freshman year was not the norm. Suddenly my friends with 3.9 GPAs from parts of VA who took 8 AP courses and got a full 1 point didn't look as smart

It was a huge freakin deal if you had anything close to a 4.0 in Fairfax County. You simply had to get straight A's throughout the entire four years. I got to JMU and there were people who had 4.1 and 4.0 and it wasn't that big of a deal. Getting a full point for AP and a half point for honors really inflates your GPA

Also, FCPS did not give ANY credit for honors classes whatsoever. So a lot of people from FCPS have "lower" GPAs than from elsewhere in the state ... but I do think JMU had a weighted system to make us more comparable.

By a rough calculation, my GPA would have been about .2 points higher with the number of AP courses I took ... giving me the full point v. the half point credit.

(06-21-2013 08:36 AM)jmufan2008 Wrote:  At least up until a few years ago, JMU was much more focused on schedule difficulty than VT was. VT you could take easy classes, but have a 3.8 and get in easy. JMU wouldn't have let you in unless you had taken some more difficult classes. Not sure if that's changed since then, but JMU for awhile has been much more interested in students that challenge themselves. Tech was always more interested in making themselves look nice with a higher avg entrance gpa score even though the quality wasn't there.

Don't know if this helps but my son ended up with somewhere between a 3.8 - 3.9 with numerous AP/Honors Classes - he got into JMU/GMU regular admission but was waitlisted at Tech - Not sure why and never followed up. Just sometimes it seems like it's the roll of the dice, everything else being equal.

(06-20-2013 08:45 PM)Potomac Wrote:  

(06-20-2013 08:34 PM)olddawg Wrote:  50 is the new 40, so 5.0 GPA is the new 4.0? Where do the poor schleps w/ a 2.5 go?

George Mason? VCU?

Does anyone know if there's any validity to the rumor that a high school student with a 3.9 GPA was rejected from JMU?

It's totally possible, especially if a kid goes to a competitive high school with classes that are weighted on a 5.0 scale.

A kid could take an easier curriculum - skip the AP courses, the hard math classes like Calculus, stop after two years of foreign language and end up in a lower percentile ranking in his class.

Pair that with weaker than average SAT scores, the kid with the 3.9 suddenly isn't looking so hot compared to all his classmates that took harder classes, got better grades and did better on SATs.

JMU looks for high grades in a challenging curriculum. Good grade in a weaker curriculum can cost a student their acceptance letter at JMU.

I have no idea if the rumored rejected student had a competitive high school course load or not. I only heard the rumor of a 3.9 GPA student getting a rejection letter and I'm sitting here thinking, how are my kids going to get in one day?