That crucial half-point makes a big difference

That crucial half-point makes a big difference

A student with an 89 receives a 3.0 GPA, and a student with a 90 receives a 4.0 GPA. Should students with almost identical grades have completely different GPAs? 

Most every Marksman knows about the 89.5.

Half a percentage point can be the difference between a 3.0 and a 4.0.

The 89.5 is a bridge between two different worlds. Between two different representations of an entire year’s worth of work.

The current grading system does not factor pluses and minuses into a student’s GPA. An A-, A and A+ are all counted equally. According to Headmaster David Dini, the school used to employ a system of checks and minuses where a plus or minus attached to a particular letter indicates a different GPA score.

“There have been periods and times where we’ve taken a really thorough look at whether we should have pluses and minuses or the system we have now,” Dini said.

When the school decided to change from a system that included pluses and minuses, it discovered a flat letter grade system was more advantageous to the student body.

“The evaluation of data at the time determined that the system of not counting pluses and minus actually favored [the] GPA [of the students],” Dini said.

Since the current policy only mandates that a 90 holds the same weight as a 99, and an 80 holds the same weight as an 89, teachers are given the freedom to decide their own rounding policies, as long as they are consistent to every student.

“We have a grading policy, but we don’t require an approach for individual teachers for rounding,” Dini said.

Not every teacher has the same rounding policies. Some rely solely on the number grade and do not round. Some will round up at the 0.5 mark. Some, such as Suzanne and Patrick McGee Family Master Teacher Joe Milliet, will even round lower grades up if they believe a particular student’s consistent effort throughout the year merits a boost.

“If I see a kid on the borderline, I try to look at the body of work, the trend of the year,” Milliet said. “Were they getting stronger? How did they do on the final [exam]? I don’t have a hard and fast rule.”

For Milliet, the number a student receives on the GPA scale in a certain class is less important than what the student learns from the class. Milliet has even started seeing colleges ignoring weighted GPAs, nullifying the effect honors and AP classes have on a student’s transcript.

“The colleges in the admissions process, a lot of them don’t like to look at weighted GPAs because schools do them all differently,” Milliet said. “And that’s an issue for kids who are in honors and AP courses because they’d like to have those weighted numbers in there.”

So, if a student is not rounded up at a borderline A grade in an honors or AP class, his transcript could show the same GPA score as a low B in a non-honors class, although the difficulty of the class would be taken into consideration by the college.

College Counselor Veronica Pullido believes colleges review students’ applications and GPA scores within the context of the environment they’re in. A GPA score at one school is going to differ from a GPA score at another school even if they use the same system because of course difficulty and course selection.

“Regardless of whether it’s a 4-point, 5-point, 100-point, or no-point scale, [colleges] just want to figure out the rigor of a curriculum, what courses are available and how well a student did among his or her peers within that particular high school,” Pulido said.

Junior James Carr has had multiple grades hover around the 89.5 mark in his Upper School tenure. He ended his sophomore year with low 90s in math and history which earned him A’s but saw an 89 in Spanish rounded down to a B.

“Being right on the edge in those classes did put a lot of stress on me,” Carr said. “Knowing it was a difference between a letter grade. But it was a pretty good feeling knowing that I would still get an A, even though I was right on the edge. It was the same A that any other kid would get, even with a 95 or above.”

Carr also recognizes that prioritizing certain classes can have a large effect on the numbers that go on his transcript at the end of the year. Too much time and effort devoted to a particular class could harm his performance in others.

“If I had known from the beginning of the year that I would finish Spanish with a high B, I could totally have put off all the work I put in that class and then focused really hard on some other classes,” Carr said.

At the end of the day, regardless of what grading system is used, the GPA score is just a number. Dini believes there is so much more to school than just grades.

“You hear us talk a lot about character and leadership development because I think, in our minds, collectively, that’s going to matter more in the long term.” Dini said. “It’s going to be more important to you than a plus or a minus on your transcript, or how that affects your GPA, and whether that lands you in this college or that college.”