Posted on 05/21/2014 1:57:13 PM PDT by Responsibility2nd
Traditionally a 4.0 is considered a perfect grade point average, but Dhara Patel, a high school senior at Plant City High School in Hillsborough County, Fla., has earned an off-the-charts 10.03 GPA.
This is good news considering the new link between GPAs and salary. A recent study by researchers at the University of Miami states that a one-point increase in high school GPA raises annual earnings in adulthood by around 12 percent for men and 14 percent for women.
The study also shows that even a one-point increase in GPA doubles the likelihood of students completing college—from 21 percent to 42 percent—for both men and women.
“Conventional wisdom is that academic performance in high school is important for college admission, but this is the first study to clearly demonstrate the link between high school GPA and labor market earnings many years later,” says Michael T. French, professor of health economics at the University of Miami and corresponding author of the study.
To contribute to her astronomical GPA, Patel took 17 Advanced Placement classes. AP classes, which are on par with college courses, are often weighted, meaning that students who take them receive extra points. That helps those students accumulate a GPA way off the traditional 4.0 chart. While we are unsure if this is the highest GPA ever, we certainly can't find any other press about it. Ravi Medikonda, then a senior at King High School in Hillsborough County, Fla., earned a 9.3079 GPA in 2012.
Aside from the AP classes, Patel also spent nights, weekends, and summers studying at Hillsborough Community College. To add to her accolades, she’s earned her associate’s degree before even graduating from high school.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
“So, those that excel in sports or arts as well as academics can never compete with those that only take academic AP classes.”
Good. That’s the way it should be. The grades should be based on academic achievement in the classes. Extracurricular activities however do matter and indicate rounding. They look good on applications and resumes etc and often get factored into acceptance decisions. Maybe not as much as you would like. During high school I worked at night and no one gave me any extra credit for that. It’s a cruel world.
“AP classes, which are on par with college courses, are often weighted, meaning that students who take them receive extra points.”
Sure, but when I was in school the maximum they were weighted was a 6.0. You could get a 5.0 for an honors class A, and a 6.0 for an AP class A, and that was that. You couldn’t even get a 6.0 aggregate GPA, because there were no AP classes for some courses, such as Phys Ed. You’d cap out around 5.4 or so for your total GPA, if you took all the AP classes available and got straight As.
Some school districts apparently weight them much higher now, but I don’t think it is fooling anyone. Surely colleges just recalculate the GPAs based on a standard formula to account for such practices.
“The one thing I do NOT like about this system is that the so called “extra-curricular” activities, like athletics, band, orchestra, theater, etc.. are only 4.0 classes.”
When I was in school, those were 0.0 classes, because they weren’t actually classes. Extracurricular means outside the curriculum, therefore no grades, and even if they wanted to give grades, they couldn’t count towards your GPA.
Absurdity
A perfect score is an even accomlishment for all who attain it
4.0
Inflating that for extra cirricular is just part of school over congragulating
I witnessed it today with my own eyes
8 th graders
I blame women...sorry...totally have snockered schools with touchy feely bullshit
Forty plus years ago we could complete high school where we actually learned how to do tasks which would lead to immediate employment. Today by the time most kids complete high school they may have covered a lot of different material but most of it is just “stuff” IMO which, with a $3 bill will get them a cup of coffee at Dunkin Donuts or a job flipping burgers.
Some of the same jobs are still out there - electrician, plumber, etc. - but a lot of the jobs that high school graduates did in “our day” have totally disappeared or left the country.
....No doubt she wants to “change the world,” is politically correctly “progressive” and has her eye on “government service.” .....
I didn’t see any references in the full article to any such sentiments on her part.
This GPA just shows me how absurd the process has become. If I met a kid purporting to have a 10.03 GPA, and was somehow convinced it was a meaningful figure, I think I’d laugh out loud.
I would blame NEA teachers and administrators regardless of gender.
You are one hundred percent right, and I’m not impressed with this student’s academic record. Prisoners on chain gangs get a lot done, too.
Here in Los Angeles, foreign-born students (or the children of foreign-born parents) take up a huge proportion of the seats available at the University of California. These grinders are able to shut out American kids because they’ve brought their freakazoid Sunday-to-Sunday study schedules to our country.
GPAs above 4.0 are simply a way to game the system and beat out a kid who went to the prom or pursued cheerleading. You’re not smarter or more deserving — you’re exactly like an Olympic athlete who takes steroids to gain an edge.
My grandparents’, parents’, and my taxes built and pay for these schools — why is there no room at UCLA anymore for kids who played Little League?
Do illegals pay “in-state” tuition in Cali?
I feel that should only be allowed after they have repaid the state for the years of elementary/high school they used.
Part of it is also the characters chasing high GPAs. It’s silly. As a parent, I’d encourage no less than a B (or better) average every semester. For every C grade there must be a comparable A grade to balance it out.
If the kid shows no affinity for math, science, chemistry, etc., then forget the dream of medical school and brace myself for another lawyer (like me).
If the kid pops Cs in English, composition, history, then brace for a doctor.
If the kid excels in languages, look into careers in that area like their mom.
Weaving a basket case over grades is just stupid. Raise a good, morally decent kid with strengths, cultivate the strengths, and get them to responsible, self sustaining adulthood.
That's the Odinga way!!!
My sister graduated from Wazzu with a perfect 4.0 GPA, Summa Cum Laude and is a 5th grade teacher making about $40K/year. She spent every waking moment completing her assignments to get those coveted “A’s”. I graduated with a 3.3 GPA in civil engineering which includes 2 “D’s” and never stayed awake past 9:00, had a wife, paid child support, and house and car payments and a job (no student loans) and now make 3 times her pay/year.
Therefore I think their study is flawed
I was #10 in my HS graduating class of approximately 150 with a 3.76 GPA. Our GPAs were not weighted. Four above me had a 4.0 (and they shared Valedictorian honors; four others never took a difficult class a day in their lives (read no Honors or AP classes) and one (who happened to be my best friend) edged me out for the number 9 spot. In my day, grades were not inflated, weighted or handed out simply on a whim to pad a student’s college application.
My late wife graduated college with a 3.94 or maybe 3.97. I can’t remember for sure. I got out of Troy with a 2.1.
We took the Federal Service Entrance Exam together. She scored 89 and I got 99. I think it surprised her a little but she ended up with an automatic 100 because of her grades.
“Do illegals pay “in-state” tuition in Cali?”
Yep.
Not a bit.
You're like the athlete who works 3x as hard to gain an edge. And quite possibly has more innate talent to begin with.
Grades are, or should be, for learning. Not for cheerleading, or being popular, or leading a protest against Bush, or becoming homecoming queen, or volunteering at a homeless shelter, or playing football.
Those, or some of them, are legitimate pursuits. But they're not what grades are designed to measure.
If you cut through the crap in this article, what it means is that this student essentially completed two years of college while still in high school.
That's an amazing accomplishment! Perhaps we can introduce her to Sheldon Cooper?
“think this punishes students who are the typical type A students who excel in their sport or art, and unjustly rewards the bookworms, who do not participate in any sport, art, or club.”
Well, it’s a SCHOOL. Extra stuff is extra.
(And yes, I played every sport.)
The article does NOT mention that she wants to “change the world” or go into ANY type of government job, womyns studies, or community organizer type program. My guess, she will go into a hard science/engineering/medicine and her intellect and obvious work ethic will get her (and possibly society) far.
“Congrats Jamal. You can’t read or write, but here’s your 4.0 GPA because you can throw a ball through through a metal ring.”
That’s not what this is about. This is about kids who DO take AP Chemistry and demonstrate MORE THAN SUFFICIENT smarts, getting 4.0 GPAs. They should have their pick of colleges, but they’re getting beat out by study prisoners from foreign cultures who’ve moved the goalpost to a 10.0. GPA. There is no benefit to America or American kids for adopting this patently absurd new method of measuring college readiness.
If you want to take away your kid’s childhood, have them sit out the prom, never play a sport, and take college classes every summer day when the other kids are inner tubing on the river — knock yourself out. That’s not the way we do it in America. We don’t want our kids to live like that. And the way we used to do it worked great.
And it’s laughable to posit that a mythical 10.0 GPA beats a 4.0 GPA academically. The 4.0 kid is just as qualified as the 10.0 for that seat at UCLA.
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