In the past few weeks, the Seneca Valley Senior high school has created a committee comprised of central office administrators, parents, teachers, school counselors, principals and two SV students to revise the way Seneca calculates QPA. The change could potentially benefit students by increasing their QPA and taking some pressure off of trying to ace quarterlies, midterms and finals.

The committee held a meeting on February 6, and options for a different system were addressed and debated thoroughly. They are considering making QPA depend solely on final grades with exam and nine week grades calculated in, instead of calculating exam scores and nine week grades directly into QPA.

The current system factors in quarterly, midterm and final exam grades independently. For example, a student could receive straight A’s on their transcript but have a QPA of less than a 4.0. This would be due to them receiving a B or lower on an exam or a nine week grade. That exam score or grade negatively affects their QPA due to it being directly calculated into the equation.

The new system the committee is proposing would solve that problem for students and could provide them with a higher QPA and therefore a higher class rank. To do this, the committee wishes to take out independent exam grades from the calculations of QPA. Furthermore, QPA would simply be based on students’ final grades alone with exam grades and nine week grades being a percent of the final grade.

As stated above, the committee is made up of several teachers, parents, central office administrators, school counselors, principals, two SV students and members of the IT department. The students recognized to offer an inside look on the issue are Samantha Condrick, a sophomore, and Carter Moriarity, a junior. Both students are active members of Student Council and have enabled the committee members to see the QPA calculation system from a student’s perspective.

Condrick discussed how she felt the proposed system could benefit students at SV, “I feel that a lot of students will be able, under the new QPA system, to hopefully raise their QPA in a way that permits them to be able to apply to a greater amount of schools. With a lower QPA it is harder to prove yourself to be an asset to colleges that have received applications from more academically achieving students.”

The new calculation system will be implemented within the next few years, and it could improve students’ QPAs by several tenths. For example, if a student has an unweighted QPA of 3.46 with Seneca Valley’s current system, the new system could possibly place him or her at a 3.52 unweighted QPA. However, every student’s situation varies based on their exam scores and grades.

Overall, having a revised and improved system for calculating students’ QPA scores could provide Seneca Valley students with a leg up and the opportunity to focus more on gaining knowledge than on class rank.