Calculating weighted grades for Lawrence high school students may help senior John Parker reduce the pain of paying for a college education.

“They colleges I’ve applied to … they ask for it,” said Parker, a senior at Lawrence High School.

Seniors graduating in 2004 at LHS and Free State High School are the first in the district to have a dual grading system applied to their grade-point average. Transcripts they send to prospective colleges will contain a new weighted grade-point average, which acknowledges a student’s willingness to take challenging courses. Transcripts also will have the traditional, unweighted GPA.

The system makes clear to admission and scholarship program officers which students subjected themselves to advanced-placement courses and which took an easier course load.

Leni Salkind, vice president of the Lawrence school board, said some students and parents were surprised by the dual system when they began preparing for December and January college application deadlines. It was adopted by the school board in May 2000.

“This is the year it’s affecting people,” Salkind said.

Parker said he was doing well enough to contend for admission to Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Va.; Pomona College in Claremont, Calif., and the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and to compete for scholarships.

“I think you’ll find a majority of people taking AP classes are looking to stimulate themselves intellectually, and they may have a lower GPA than people taking cooking,” he said.

In 2000, the Lawrence school board voted 4-3 to authorize a three-year transition to a system that gave extra GPA credit to students taking the advanced placement courses. These are considered college-level classes in statistics, biology, chemistry, history, politics, art, English and Latin.

GPAs are based on letter grades of A, B, C, D and F. In a nonweighted course, an A earns a student 4.0 points toward the overall GPA. But a grade of A in a weighted course earns the student 4.5 points.

In Parker’s case, the grades he’s received in advanced placement courses gave him a weighted GPA of 3.9. His unweighted GPA is 3.75.

“For colleges looking for the top students and providing scholarships, that could very likely catch their eye,” said Melessa Demo, a guidance counselor at LHS.

While Parker pays attention to his tandem GPAs, Demo said the grading system reform didn’t register on the radar screen of most high school students in Lawrence.

Under district policy, the weighted GPA and a corresponding rank in the senior class is to be used only for college scholarships and admissions.

The unweighted GPA determines school honors including high school valedictorians, National Honor Society and which students are in the top 10 percent of the graduating class.