School shooting in Florida

So, Laura Ingraham started demonizing Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg for getting rejected from some colleges and for a 4.1 gpa (yes, they really are that petty, but that’s no surprise.) Hogg fired back with a list of her advertisers to boycott (two have since pulled out.)

Ingraham today:

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Er… rejected for having a 4.1? For having more than an A?
That’s nonsense… no one gets rejected simply for not taking maximum AP credits (which, at least in the 90’s, was the only way to get over a 4.0).

And really, we need to organize more boycotts of Fox. That’s literally the only thing that will impact them at all.

You can’t boycott Fox because the same idiots that watch it now will keep watching it no matter what. Just need to target the advertisers that are using Fox’s horrible shows to push their products. I’m assuming that’s what you mean, just hope that tactic eventually crushes their bullshit propaganda empire forever.

Some of the GPA scales are weird now (like 5 or higher.) Class rank, test scores, essays, and the like go into the decision making process (I don’t know which schools rejected him.)

This is absolutely true.

I graduated high school with a 5.3 precisely because we used a 5 point scale.

This was the late 90’s.

She lost 2 advertisers today so did the grudging Twitter apology:

But she can’t help but suggest the kid is a crisis actor. “Poised”. Fuck this lady, what an asshole

Wow, no kidding - even puts poised in quotes, as a further dig.

The really awesome part of my super rural schooling was that we only had 3 AP courses total, and they did not increase GPA beyond 4.0 in official school calculations.

They’ve since eliminated all three AP courses in favor of dual enrollment classes at the shitty local community college.

God I fucking hate that school.

Having just helped navigate my own son through the college admissions process, I can totally sympathize with David Hogg and other kids getting rejected with A+ averages. 4.0 doesn’t carry the weight it used to, especially with schools in many places now using a crazy weighted scale where you can have as high as a 5.4 GPA. My son has a 4.1, same as David, but only took a couple of honors classes, the rest were just advanced prep. He goes to a private school where they do several hours of community service per quarter by requirement, is involved in several clubs at school that pertain to business, played varsity football and lacrosse, and even built his own online small business from the ground up, including negotiating with a supplier overseas and building his own website and marketing, documenting everything along the way. He attended an Entrepreneurship Startup incubator on Saturdays in the fall, and his team won for their design. He’s bright, articulate and outgoing, and impresses all the business people he meets through school and his extracurricular activities.

Sounds like a kid you want at your college right? You’d be surprised. While he did get into the business program at the school he wanted, he has to jump through some hoops first, including an online program this summer to bootstrap him into what they consider the proper level for Math. At least he gets college credits for it. If he can successfully complete the program and earn a 3.0 or better average this fall semester, he officially transfers to the business program in the spring. All this because he didn’t take AP/Honors math. Everything else was above their requirements, but they find one thing to stick you with…and you’re done.

AP math is intro to calculus, right?

The AP Math at his school is basically College Calculus I. You get the same three credit hours you’d get for the college course (provided you pass the exam at the end).

Basically, some colleges are saying “You’re a great kid, but since you didn’t take the same course we offer here to freshmen when you were a senior in high school, you’re not great enough for this program.”

That begs the question, why not just have college-bound kids take a 5th year of high school, focused entirely on freshmen level college courses, and then they only have to take (and pay for) 3 years of actual college to get their undergraduate degree!

There were two AP math courses when I took it, AB and BC. BC basically dumps you into Calc 3. AB into Calc 2, or 1 if you only got a 3 on the test. At least that was how it was at the engineering school I went to.

My niece went to a college that made her re-take her AP classes because they wanted her taught their way. She graduated in 4 years with a nursing degree and a job already waiting and was an RN within two years.

I graduated 4th in my class at the ass end of the 90s and I had a 5.6. The valedictorian had a teensy bit over a 6.0. We got .04 added to our GPA for every semester of an Honors course and a .08 for every semester of an AP course. I’m sure the math has changed since I went to HS. I did not have a 4.0 without those credits, since I got three Bs during my HS years*.

Since my HS and state college were both in Florida, the AP credits transferred seamlessly, meaning I got “out” of taking Calc 1 and 2, Physics, and Chemistry (maybe English too). My college’s Honors program had it’s own ideas about what “gen ed” courses should look like so my other AP credits didn’t do anything except add credit hours to my transcripts.

* 2 of those Bs were in fucking ART class, which I’m still pissed about. Not being talented in art shouldn’t have affected my grades I figure and I was a good, attentive student otherwise. I’m glad they didn’t grade P.E. the same way, for sure.

Nice! Your niece is in a good field. I know a lot of really good people, women and men, who are RNs, med techs and NPs. It seems like it can often be crazy work, but most of them also say it’s highly satisfying.

On the AP stuff, I shouldn’t complain, as I benefitted from it myself back in the day. My grades were only so-so in high school, but I passed AP English and History, and received credits for both that got me out of around 9 hours of college classes. Back then that was about a $500 savings…today it could be $3000 or more depending on the school!

It’s just frustrating (and moreso for the kids) that getting accepted, even at state colleges, is such a production these days when they’re way overcharging for the education to begin with.

I dropped out of school.

To be fair, I had a rather nice job waiting for me when I did it and eventually spent WAAAAY too many years in college, but I always like dropping that into conversations about how people did in high school, lol.

I’m really sorry (generally, not just to you) if my post sounded like it was taking it there. I considered not posting. I was really just trying to give my experiences about the ridiculousness of GPAs now. I had a few friends that were younger than me and when they graduated a few years later the valedictorian GPA had already risen to something like 6.4.

No worries with me! I actually take a little bit of pleasure at shocking the people I work with by using little nuggets like that, lol. I was once told that if I told my life story without any context, it would be ridiculously unbelievable. I kind of suppose that’s the same for most of us, but I just have a little more fun with it than most.

My life story is completely boring and believable. :P So not everyone.

But there are a lot of youse guys on this forum who I love to read stories from because of the things you have lived through.