alt Hacker News> that “extra” is going to be somewhat school and school system dependent
Is it? That’s news to me. I grew up thinking it was standard to just have 5 grade points for honors and AP classes. I guess the nuance comes into the bar for a class being “honors,” vs. AP which has a more consistent definition given the standardized exam?
A significant, and growing, number of schools (many of them independent and high end) are no longer offering AP/Honors classes. Which means that you now don’t have a level measure for comparing GPA.
To the original point though it’s one of many reasons why GPA + Test scores isn’t really a standard metric to be used on their own for merit based admissions. It’s really just a bar after which you have to take additional factors into account.