sue1973

Hi - our eldest daughter (16) has been homeshooling, studying her Alevels online since we moved here in July, but has decided she would like to enroll in high school after all (long story!)
However the school is saying they can't do anything without an official transcript from her old secondary school in the UK. I had spoken to her Headteacher about it before she left (as we hoped she would attend High School here), and it's obviously not something UK schools do, but every teacher kindly wrote a letter stating the work she had covered and hours studied in each course, and she also has her GCSE results. This isn't enough though and they are demanding a transcript. Has anyone used an online service for this? Thank you

petitefrancaise

Ask the school if there is a particular company they have already used?

However, what is the aim of all this?
Do you want your daughter to go to uni in the UK or college in the USA? ie. are you just trying to convince the school to put your daughter into appropriate class levels or are you trying to gain gpa credit.?

sue1973

Thank you - we are probably here for around 4 years (we have come with my husband's job), and will then return to the UK. So the intention is, that she will attend high school until June 2019, then college here. She wants to continue to study once we return to the UK aswell.
So she needs her credit sorting, and also wants to be in appropriate classes as she had finished school in the UK and her gcses were all A* and A results, so doesn't want to be repeating things.

petitefrancaise

OK.

You are looking at at least 3 different issues:
1 credits/required courses to graduate high school - what is she missing for this?
2. weighted and/or unweighted GPA credit to help her with her rank in class and college admissions. What year is she in?

In terms of appropriate class level, can she test into any of the classes? I'm assuming you are wanting to put her into the AP classes? If you have detailed course descriptions from her previous school in the UK, then you can always look at the pre-AP course descriptions and check off what you can show she has already studied. This is more about convincing the school that your daughter can do the class but you still have the issue of getting credits to graduate high school.

The other thing is the plan to switch from US "college" to UK university. This is going to be tricky again basically doing what you are currently doing in reverse. I'd choose one or the other ( or aim for both at the moment but enter and finish only one of them). What is her visa?

Owen778

Agreed. I'm sure PF knows more about this, but there's no way I'd want to combine US and UK college / university systems.

I notice you're in California as well. These things can vary quite a bit by state and by school district.

petitefrancaise

Well, I was in a similar situation except that my daughter was definitely going to US college so I didn'thave that complication.

School districts all have their own policy on out of district transfers and gpa credit. It is actually quite hopeful since the OP's school have requested a transcript. Our school was a straight "no credit and definitely not weighted gpa" so don't even bother.

If they don't have their own preference for a service to interpret the transcript then I'd probably look at https://www.wes.org/evaluations-and-fees/

scottyvisa

I used WES to have my GCSEs translated for my BA, it didn't take too long, just had to apply to the initial examining board and have them send the results to WES, did it all online for less than $100, and that included express mail etc.

Worth noting, my poor GCSEs (Only a few Cs, rest below, I was a lazy teenager) were translated as the equivalent of graduating a US High School at 18 with a C+ GPA. I was pleasantly surprised!

robtuck

We went through this a year ago - our daughter joined a High School in October in 11th Grade. We had several weeks of going back and forth with the Counsellor at the school, including having to print out the entire syllabus for Maths and being able to line that up against course content here (Georgia). We had a few where we kept pushing and eventually got them to accept ouor view, but we lost a few battles along the way as well. The two main issues were:

a) Translating grades - going into a A,B,C,D Fail only system meant we had a few teething troubles telling them what a B meant in the Uk, or a C.
b) Some courses like Mathematics - in the USA it is split into the subjects and covered off in one go, whereas in the UK the GCSE level might only cover off 80% of the Calculus for example, because you come back to in A Level.

If she had the ability to do so, the A Level's are actually considered to be better than a High School Diploma, they relate to significant AP Classes being credited over here. And as a post above alluded to, a good set of GCSE grades can actually get you into some College's.

A year later and our daughter has already achieved enough credits and has a GPA high enough to sneak into Honors at some Colleges. She also managed to come 2nd in her American history class.

sue1973

Thank you for the responses. Her assigned counsellor (also her younger brother's counsellor who is in 9th grade) has told me to hold off on paying for a transcription service until he and the vice principal have looked through everything. The credit and GPA still really confuses me to to be honest! I've never had it explained so feel in a fog about it all!

robtuck

As they go through lessons they get grades from A to D or fail (actually it is a % out of 100 with 70 being a D, 71-79 being a C, 80 to 89 being a B and 90+ being an A). They don't have end of year exams, which is why they get confused trying to translate a 2 year course against semesters of parts of an overall subject.

The credits are for hours of study - they need a certain number of credits to enable them to graduate and get the Diploma. Basically, turn up and be useless and you still stand a chance.

They have core subjects - so they need to have a certain number of Math based courses complete for example, USA History and Literature and so on. Some of these are more important so they weight the Grade (your average grade from the lesson over an entire semester) higher than other courses and come to a weighted GPA. You will have a GPA and a weighted one and it just depends which one the Colleges use.

At some point they also need to sit one of, or both if you like, the SAT or ACT. These are mostly multiple choice tests covering Reading/Math comprehension. Most coastal colleges use SAT, most central use ACT but they are beginning to be both considered. You get a score which also goes towards College admission requirements, this is separate to the High School work and the student can take it multiple times to get a better score. A child with good GCSE grades would probably do well in the SAT straight away.

robtuck

On credits - you can actually accrue credits towards College while still in High School - so if she is clever enough, it is possible to go into College with a head start. The same system keeps going through College - GPA, credits etc.

Also, on GPA - they revert this to 1-4 scale quite often. An a is 4, B is 3 and so on. They then average out the grade for each subject and you get the terms you'll have heard in movies, like a 3.2 GPA. That basically means mostly B's with some A's.

carcajou

One of the issues in grade translation is that not everywhere prints percentages. The last jurisdiction I lived in, in the US, 93-100 was an A, 85-92 was a B, 77-84 was a C, and 65-76 was a D. Though it was often rounded down to tens, ie 90-100 was an A, etc.

In Australia, 80-100 is an A, 65-79 is a B, 50-64 is a C, 35-49 is a D. So by percentage an "A" student in Australia could be a "C" student in the US. 30% is also the pass mark on the national literacy and numeracy exam. Percentages aren't always printed on report cards either (they are not here).

So Mom coming in and saying their son or daughter should be in top sets because they were a consistent "A" student back home, taken at face value could mean one thing, but would mean a different thing if slightly tweaked to mean that the son or daughter was a consistent 80% student.

So, not good enough to say the child was an A student, the school needs to dive into that and figure out just what exactly that means.

carcajou

Further - here is how you calculate GPA:

A - 4 points; B - 3 points; C - points; D - 1 point.

Add up the number of points and divide by the number of grades.

For instance:

Little Johnny's grades in underwater basket weaving are A, B, B, A, C, A.

4 + 3 + 3+ 4 + 2 + 4 = 20.

Divided by 6, as there were 6 marks.

20 / 6 = 3.33, which is a B.

3.51 to 4 = A
2.51 to 3.5 = B
1.51 to 2.5 = C
1.0 to 1.5 = D
0.99 or less = F.

Sometimes if a student is close they will bump them up, but close means close - ie, a 3.48 might get bumped up to an A. No way a student on a 3.2 does.

If a student does not hand in an assignment, that is a "zero" and a GPA killer. A student gets no points for that but a the total gets divided by an extra figure. So, in the above example, let's add another assignment, a zero, and Little Johnny doesn't turn it in:

20 / 8 = 2.5. So Little Johnny dipped from a high B to a C, just by not turning in one assignment.

There can also be bonus points, for instance taking an honours class means an A is worth 5 points instead of 4, taking an Advanced Placement class means an A is worth 6 points instead of 4, that is done to reflect the difficulty of those units and not to penalise those taking them for doing the harder classes.

Hope that helps.

petitefrancaise

Carcajou, imagine doing all as you describe but from the french system. Everything in french and grades out of 20 where no-one ever gets 20 and a 16/20 is an A 17or 18 very very rare. It would place you in the top 1% of french students nationally. Nightmare. Then go into junior year in the USA when you only had 1 year of the BacS OIB left and get no credits.

OP, what year/grade is your daughter joining?

If it's sophomore, (grade10) then she will have a chance of getting enough credits with what you can cajole out of them for previous studies and the following 2.5 years. Including summer school where she could see about dual credit classes.

If it's junior year then after talking to my daughter about this. .... she might be better off just making sure she will get sufficient credits to graduate and doing the very, very best she can from now on and taking dual credit classes ( high school and college credits) wherever she can, perhaps at the local community college in the summer.

If there is an obvious discrepancy between her grades ( all "A"s or 90%+) and her GPA then the college application personal essay can be used to describe why this is - in terms of a massive challenge overcome by your student. You can also contact US colleges and speak to admissions about her application, asking for special circumstances to be taken into account. This is what we did, with a fair amount of success. My daughter got onto the honors course that she wanted and with a large scholarship.

Get private tutoring for the SAT/ACT - an excellent score there will really help.