Kaelyn Jones

This year, AP Precalculus won’t be weighed on a five-point scale.

For the first time ever, in the 2023-24 school year Precalculus is going to be offered by College Board as an Advanced Placement (AP) class. This means that students across the country will be able to get credit for the college level class they are taking. However, this year it won’t be impacting students’ GPAs.

Amanda Dowd is a math teacher, and has been teaching for 19 years. This year, Dowd is one of the AP Precalculus teachers.

“We were noticing in the spring that the AP curriculum for Precalculus identically matches what we’re already doing in Precalculus,” Dowd said. “So at the end of last year, we started considering switching over and offering AP credit.”

After learning that AP Precalculus will be offered, students found out that the class would not be weighted on the five-point scale. At most high schools across the country, AP classes are weighted which means your class grade correlates with a five-point scale rather than a four-point scale.

“It was a very unfortunate breakdown in communication, but we definitely are still teaching it just like an AP class,” Dowd said. “We are still offering the AP test. We’re also offering [Oregon Institute of Technology] dual credit so kids are still able to get college credit. The only piece  missing is that extra grade point for GPA.”

This change has not gone unnoticed among the students taking Precalculus. Misha Rana, junior, is in AP Precalculus this year, and has recognized how this impacts students like her.

“It kind of puts us at a little bit of a disadvantage,” Rana said. “While we’re technically taking the same class as other students, we’re not getting the extra grade point, which can make our GPA not look as good.”

Apart from not getting as many benefits out of the AP class, not having the weighted grade puts West Linn students at a relative disadvantage. Other schools get the GPA boost while West Linn students do not.

“GPA is one of the most important data points about an applicant,” Rana said. “Even just one class not being counted the same as [it is for] other students from the nation can affect our chances of getting into good colleges when the GPA is just a few points lower.”

The students are not the only ones who wish the class had been weighted this year. Teachers in the math department will also be working with school and district administrators to ensure that all goes to plan next year.

“I will say that we hope that it’s [weighted next year] because now we know the procedures and channels that have to be followed,” Dowd said. “We’re going to be very diligent about making that happen. And we have no reason to not get accepted.”