What do you consider an excellent average for teens?

[bluesaturn]

I know plenty of 4.0's with no extras that had a hard time getting into college but I don't know of any B students that were involved kids that didn't get into their first choice of schools.

Unfortunately I know plenty of B students that were varsity athletes, class presidents, consistent volunteers, etc. that didn't get to their choice schools. You are right that activities are important, but they are still no guarantee.

 

[barkley]

it's also valuable to find out how a particular college weights college units taken by a highschool student and weather it's advantageos to do so. i took a couple of college courses forever ago when i went to highschool that met my highschool's requirements for credits and they counted the same as if i had taken a/p courses when it came to the college i was accepted into, the bonus was they also accepted the credits so i was admitted with a couple of general ed classes out of the way. the highschool dd will attend next year has a program where she can do the standard jr/sr course requirements, take them as a/p courses or take the equivilent courses through a college or university. the advantage to taking them through the college or university is at this point the ones in our state are drasticly reducing the number of freshman they are admitting but sophmore and junior admissions are still plentiful.

 

[MichelleVW]

honestly, at least around here. Colleges don't exactly look at freshman year. The one my school sends out is your overall 10-12 GPA.

I've never heard of that. Freshman year GPA counts towards your final class ranking and at least in Texas that is VERY important.

as a college freshman, who just did teh whole college/scholarship application i can tell you that i never once, in the millions of pieces of paper i filled out, was i ever asked for my WEIGHTED gpa. colleges want UNweighted. class rank isn't very important either. my graduating class had 11 valedictorians.

i also work in a high school, and i'm the one that sends the transcripts to your sister. they are so loaded with information, i think they're only kept to prove that required classes were taken, and an offical gpa.

There were 11 students all with the exact same GPA? The Valedictorian is the highest ranking student in the school, how in the world is there more than one?

 

[Hollywoodhaha]

I am an upcoming Junior and my GPA all through high school so far has been 3.4 and it is driving me crazy! I take only 1 honors a year, but this year they don't really have honors so I took 1 AP. I believe in taking only what I can handle. I'm not going to be like the kids in my class who I know can't handle the APs and they end up taking as many as possible. I'm not going to kill myself. If I am not good at history, I'm not going to go and take AP history.
I enjoy psychology so I am taking the AP in that.

Also, my ranking is 163 out of 532 students. My class has a lot of straight A people.

 

[Camicar]

I've never heard of that. Freshman year GPA counts towards your final class ranking and at least in Texas that is VERY important.



There were 11 students all with the exact same GPA? The Valedictorian is the highest ranking student in the school, how in the world is there more than one?

Dd's high school had four kids with the exact same GPA -- 4.0. (It is not possible to get higher than a 4.0 at our school.) All four of them are ranked #1 in the class and the fifth person is ranked #5. The valedictorian does not make the speech at our graduation. Kids compete to give the speech and any student is eligible to enter the speech competition.

I agree that a lot of colleges are not looking at weighted GPA's any longer. I do know that in DS16's class the kids are in an uproar over the #1 kid in the class because she is not taking honors/AP courses. She won't actually end up being the #1 kid because at graduation they weight the grades for that but for now it looks like she is #1.
----------
My sister is a associate dean at one of major public universities in this country. She was telling me the other day that larger Universities really have no way of distinguishing between honors and regular classes. They can usually tell AP classes because of the added GPA weight, but that if a kid gets a B in just an honors level course, it doesn't look as good as the kid that got the A in the regular level, because all the university sees is the A and the B, they don't know one class was honors and one wasn't.

Our school does not weight the grades for anything. Your grade is your grade, period. I know that my dd had 4.0 this year and one of her friends is aggravated because she took a bunch of AP classes and did not get a 4.0, while my dd who did not take any AP classes did get a 4.0 and one of the AP teachers pointed out that my dd's higher GPA looks better than hers.

 

[MELSMICE]

I have no idea what a 96 on a 0-4 scale is


Im taking 3 advanced classes and 2 honors classes, so Im not taking easy classes.

So is a 96 good? What kind of colleges would take that?

I believe you could go on-line to the college sites & see what their criteria is for acceptance.

96 is a good average, but there will be many students above you & many, many more below you.

I have 3 DD's - one had a higher GPA than you, one is about right where you are & the other is lower. They each will/have received monetary rewards for their grades, but they are each a different amount because of different factors.

Depending on where you want to go to school will depend on how much monetary rewards you will get.

Also, your SAT & ACT scores will play a role in determining what colleges you will be accepted at & what your monetary scholarship will be.

Don't forget, there are many scholarships available. You just have to research to find out what they are. Apply to any & all of them.

 

[kydisneyfans]

The max was a 4.0 in our school system, I graduated with a 3.5 and was #37 out of 367. The grading table was 90-100 A, 80-89 B, etc. I had multiple college offers but chose the cheap state school-after 1 year it turned into a full academic scholarship as I had a 4.0 my first year of college.

 

[MichelleVW]

Dd's high school had four kids with the exact same GPA -- 4.0. (It is not possible to get higher than a 4.0 at our school.) All four of them are ranked #1 in the class and the fifth person is ranked #5. The valedictorian does not make the speech at our graduation. Kids compete to give the speech and any student is eligible to enter the speech competition.



.

Oh...I can see it happening then. My DD graduated 20th in her class of 200 with a 4.2. The #1 student had a 4.8somthing. He was/is an amazing kid.

But isn't the GPA on a 5 point scale and the Weighted a 6 point scale?

All I know is that thankfully my DD18 was in the top 10% of her graduating class so she got into her first choice college, University of Texas-GO LONGHORNS!

 

[claudia]

I agree that a lot of colleges are not looking at weighted GPA's any longer. I do know that in DS16's class the kids are in an uproar over the #1 kid in the class because she is not taking honors/AP courses. She won't actually end up being the #1 kid because at graduation they weight the grades for that but for now it looks like she is #1.

Having a good GPA, many extra activities and being a good all-around student/citizen is going to be your best bet to get into school. I know plenty of 4.0's with no extras that had a hard time getting into college but I don't know of any B students that were involved kids that didn't get into their first choice of schools.

It is getting very, very competitive and this year was a killer. My DS with his 4.0 (all AP classes), top 10%, 2150 SAT, 31 ACT, Honor Society and Foreign Language Honor Society, lots of extra curriculars, 500+ hours of volunteer work, wrote excellent essay's (according to his teachers) and had excellent teacher recommendations did not get into his top 2 choices (both were Ivies) but he did get into the top 2 state universities and NYU. The schools he did apply to said that they received 10,000+ more applications than last year.....especially the state schools due to this economic crisis we are in. Kids that would have been a shoe in last year didn't have great results this year. I think any student who is looking at a Tier One college/university is going to have a tough time of it....

 

[Feralpeg]

I would be less concerned with the number and more concerned with both the variety/types (advanced placement, Honors) of courses taken and community service hours accumulated.
Colleges are focusing MUCH differently than years ago.
A straight A student with regular classes
versus a
B+ or A student in AP classes is weighted very differently. Much more weight is given to the Advanced placement classes which are much more indepth scholastically.

This is very true. My daughter was given an extra scholarship by her university because she had taken honors (academically challenging) classes. She also had a large number of community service hours that were taken into consideration when scholarships were granted.

At her high school you could actually have a grade point higher than 4.0. The grades were weighted to give extra points for honors courses. DD had a 4.7 GPA when she graduated.

 

[DramaQueen]

96 is a great average! But make sure you keep it up! It's easier to get those high grades in grade 9 than it is throughout all your 4 years!

When I was applying to uni they only looks at your grade 11 & 12 marks, so all of my 90s from grade 9 didn't matter. I was applying for theatre, so they were looking for a lot of extra curricular stuff as well.

Make sure you do some volunteering and join lots of clubs and teams to make your university apps look even more impressive. There will be a lot of kids with high averages to compete against, so it's the extra curricular stuff that they look at a lot to decide which students to admit.

 

[ZephyrHawk]

Well, it's hard to answer this because you have to figure in honors/AP type classes. An A in a normal level class probably comes out to a B for one of these higher level classes so... It ticked me off to no end that the valedictorian and two salutatorians in my graduating class had not an AP class among them (no honors at my school), in fact, only one person ranked above me had any kind of high level classes at all. So yeah, you get B's in AP Calculus you rank higher to me than the girl who kept her 4.0 by taking typing and art and the like.

 

[MichelleVW]

96 is a great average! But make sure you keep it up! It's easier to get those high grades in grade 9 than it is throughout all your 4 years!

When I was applying to uni they only looks at your grade 11 & 12 marks, so all of my 90s from grade 9 didn't matter. I was applying for theatre, so they were looking for a lot of extra curricular stuff as well.

Make sure you do some volunteering and join lots of clubs and teams to make your university apps look even more impressive. There will be a lot of kids with high averages to compete against, so it's the extra curricular stuff that they look at a lot to decide which students to admit.

Trust me...those early grades do really matter in the states now. It's ultra competitive.

 

[Diva of Dragons]

This is not helpful but isn't "excellent average" an oxymoron? Like jumbo shrimp and government intelligence... LOL! Yes, I could use more sleep.

 

[PatsGirl]

I think the stakes are higher than when I was a kid. I would say 3.7 to be competitive as excellent



We got his report card today and I'm sort of irritated. He got an A- in math, but the comment was "top student in the class." My son says he has consistently been the highest student all year. What does it say about your class if the top student can't get an A?

I think it says that the teacher is challenging the students and that is great I, on the other hand, am having an issue with DD's new school ~ she is consistently getting A+ in each and every class ~ what does it say about a school if a child doesn't get anything less than perfect? I think it says they are NOT challenging her.