Current juniors are the first graduating class affected by NEISD’s decreased multiplier.
Current seniors have a 1.29 multiplier on their AP coursework along with a 1.15 for honors coursework. Students in the class of 2025 have much lower multipliers with their AP classes being 1.15 and honors classes being 1.08.
“They found as we were submitting college applications across the country that a 1.2 multiplier was an incredibly inflated GPA,” lead counselor Courtney Tarbox said.
According to Tarbox, most colleges plug a lot of those numbers into their own system and have their own way of evaluating numbers.
“What we found was that more and more high schools across the nation were going to a system of being unranked so that their students would be holistically reviewed when they’re being considered for college applications,” Tarbox said.
They were also lowered because it appeared that the higher multipliers were putting pressure on students to take a large amount of AP courses just for a higher grade.
“I feel like they had to take an AP class because it had such a heavy 1.29 so we find that this should hopefully allow students to be able to make better choices of classes of what fits and suits them best without the pressure of such a high multiplier and the need to have to take all AP classes,” Tarbox said.
Compared to other high schools in Texas, Johnson has a lot of students with a GPA over 100. To admission committees, this could look like grade inflation and could trigger additional review. Moreover, students can become competitive with their GPAs because it can grant them automatic access to UT Austin and make the application process go smoother.
“Texas, Florida and California have a state law and in that state law they’re saying that students in the top 10% can have automatic admissions to a Texas public college or university,” Tarbox said. “UT Austin is the only exception, they follow a waiver every year so that’s why there’s this more like top 6%.”
Although, it should be noted that colleges want to accept more students by holistic review- so based on their personal qualities- rather than automatic admissions to see what other attributes students can bring to their school other than just good grades. Therefore, the decreased multiplier hopefully will encourage students to focus less on their academics; this is also why class rank is hidden for a majority of people.
“Anyone in the top 10% will have a rank printed on their transcript,” Tarbox said “For others it will be that we don’t rank so that way they are free to be reviewed on their own merit and not by a number.”
