Interesting little item on Michigan admissions

Thats garbage. Its just a boon to schools that offer absurdly inflated GPAs or students who don't challenge themselves w/ AP classes.

I don't see why we should consider their own explanation suspect.

Why the change in policy? The University determined that the margin of difference in the grade point average recalculation is not significant enough to continue to sustain the effort. The time that can be saved by eliminating this step can be better utilized to focus on the review of applications and recruitment of students.

I always thought "recalculating GPAs" meant not counting AP classes as extra, and taking out pluses and minuses more generally.

I am sure the university is still considering weighted vs. unweighted GPA and whether or not a student challenged themself.

OK, I went through this this year and this is my take. Michigan will still see class rank, so it's not a huge deal. I have a 3.85 unweighted, but a 4.53 weighted because I have had 3-4 AP/honors classes every year. A kid with a 3.9-4.0 from another school who has no AP or honors classes would look better in the old system. So, for me it's good. But it could work the other way around for some kids. But Michigan will still see class rank and your schedule, so it's really not a big deal. Michigan was one of the only schools in the country to reweight grades, and they're not anymore. It'll save the some time. I just think the old system was bad because it didn't give kids with harder classes more points towards their GPA. The admissions people had to look at the schedule and then take into account the toughness fo their schedule.

I think this is a positive move. The University seems to care more about the wasted resources, but I didn't really like the way they did it before. There's a difference between not challenging yourself and not having the availability to be challenged. Admissions will swear up and down that if a school doesn't have AP classes to offer they don't hold that against the applicant, but I don't buy for a second that they don't misunderstand or screw something up along the way with that at some point. My high school only had 3 AP classes (Lit, Chem, Physics AB) until I was a junior, despite being the largest one in our area. Furthermore, my high school did a fabulous job making sure Physics and Chem were the same hour every year, making it impossible to take both of them without skipping a few classes (Granted they were a huge waste of time if you were good enough to handle an AP class, but it still required going through a bit of red tape to make it happen) or testing out of them (A good way to ruin a summer if you don't get the B you need on an exam to do so). Furthermore, they didn't weigh your GPA, and I know several people in front of me who didn't even make Top Ten despite being way smarter than the valedictorian because they dual enrolled in community college to actually challenge themselves. Its situations like that I think will be avoided completely with the new admissions. Again, I know they promise to consider all that, but as many applications that have gone through them over the years, I'm sure somebody got screwed somewhere (Shoot, back in the day that could have been a deal breaker if you were white, lol). On top of that, since most of the students come from Michigan, I'm sure the new state-mandated high school graduation requirements that put a stranglehold on electives helped make the choice for them as well. Since students are FORCED to take at least mid-level classes now, the odds of getting an applicant with a 4.0 on absolutely nothing for classes is near zero. For the record: There were 5 AP classes my junior year, of which I took one (AP Language and Composition, which replaced Honors 11). My senior year they went crazy and added a bunch of them, of which I took Calc, Lit, and Physics AB (Would have taken US History, too, if I didn't have 3 first hours at the beginning of the year. Thank you counselors, for assuring me everything would be alright in the fall and sending me to waste hundreds of hours and $50 of my summer reading history books I wouldn't end up needing). Only regret there was not taking Chem instead of Physics AB, which turned out to worthless for college credit. Literally all of my top classmates also took as tough a schedule as they could (Had like 4 or 5 classes with some of them senior year, lol), so not quite hitting 4.0 didn't destroy my ranking, either. In other words, I wasn't actually one of the kids screwed by my doomsday scenario, I just could have been... They also started weighing the GPA starting with the kids graduating this year, FWIW.

The only real questions is how does this affect recruiting?

Michigan generally places a much bigger influence on the classes you take than your GPA, as I understand it, so I doubt this will affect admissions that much. That said, I think this could be a major development for athletics admissions. As I understand it, a number of recruits over the years have had GPA issues with the admissions department, as their recalculated GPA didn't meet a certain standard. This may be much less of an issue if borderline athletes get their freshman grades and non-core classes grades included in their GPA.

this probably means that GPA will be weighted lower in the admissions process overall, increasing the weight of standardized tests, extracurricular activities, and essays. the quality of high schools across the country vary so much it's nearly impossible to use a simple number system to indicate how smart a student is anyway. i mean, does a 4.0 from a high school in rural idaho mean the same thing as a 4.0 from an inner city chicago high school? who the hell knows. so does it really matter if it's a 4.5 out of 5.0 from rural idaho vs. a 3.6 out of 4.0 from inner city chicago? methinks not.

and we don't recalculate GPAs. There are schools in TX and MA that don't even give numbers, they use HH, and Hon, and various other letters. My guess would be that they are now going to use class rank more extensively. Most high schools, even if they "do not rank" will let you know roughly where in the class the student falls. If you then take the class rank and the rigor of the school into account, you'll get a better indication of how good a student is. My 2 cents.

Will this help with JUCO transfers?