Are Grades Important?
I recently read an article in which the author opined that as a society we are much too grade-obsessed and that grades are not indicative of the real world. The author went on to say that the obsession with grades makes the transition to employment difficult. I disagree.
While grades may not be the best method of determining mastery of a subject, it is what we have today. High school grades, especially grades received in rigorous courses, colleges say are the best indicator of college success. In other words, if you can handle college-level work in high school you will likely pass and graduate from your 4-year college or university.
I will however caution parents and teens with regard to the number of rigorous courses taken in high school. It's unnecessary to take 15 AP courses to impress colleges admissions. For the vast majority of teens, taking an abundance of rigorous courses in high school will likely result in less time available to pursue extracurricular activities, community...
Course Rigor vs GPA - What’s Really Important?
Course Rigor vs GPA - What’s Really Important?
There’s a lot of pressure in choosing the right courses for high school. Should your teen take regular classes, honors, or AP? Is it better to have a higher GPA in regular classes or a slightly lower GPA in AP or honors courses? Is GPA more important for college admissions? And what about stress and burn out? Don’t they need time to have after school activities and some ‘downtime?’
Keep in mind, AP, Honors and International Baccalaureate (IB) courses only look good when the grades are A’s and B’s. This is because schools offering theses classes usually bump up the grade points for those classes (meaning your teen gets credit 5 points for an A, 4 for a B, 3 for a C instead of the typical 4,3 and 2 credit points respectively) it inflates your teens GPA. Therefore almost EVERY college recalculates the GPA WITHOUT those extra points. (A few colleges use the extra points when nearly every student is...
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