For the class of 2028 and succeeding classes, college courses taken concurrently or over the summer will not count toward the high school weighted grade-point average (GPA), according to the MHS 2026-2027 Course Catalogue.
These changes will not affect the GPA increase from dual enrollment programs or the Middle College, Director of Secondary Education Maurissa Koide said.
“We are limiting the outside credit limit, which includes dual enrollment, concurrent enrollment, or other independent courses like UC Scout or BYU Independent studies, to be a maximum of 80 credits,” Koide said. “Dual enrollment courses will give the GPA a grade boost, similar to AP courses, and they will be included on the MHS transcript because the dual enrollment courses come from programming that we provide in MUSD.”
College courses will be marked as pass or no pass on the high school transcript, but the actual letter grade will still be reported to colleges, Assistant Principal Dawnel Sonntag said. Colleges will still consider concurrent college courses when calculating their own GPA, she added.
“For instance, if you graduated here with a 3.5 but you had taken several outside college courses, and you had gotten A’s on those, the both transcripts would go in, and then the colleges look at the actual grades, and they recalculate the GPA,” Sonntag said. “For college entrances, it (the policy change) doesn’t impact (entrance) at all. The only thing it impacts is here, your ranking, which is not a huge deal.”
Programs such as dual enrollment and the Engineering Academy at Innovation are offered by MUSD, which is why the classes still affect weighted GPA even though they’re college classes, Sonntag said.
“Going and taking a class at Mission College because you don’t want to take that class here is not the same,” Sonntag said.
Koide and a team of other committee members came up with the policy change two years ago when updating the high school graduation requirements, she said. The committee consisted of school counselors, administrators, and teachers, she added.
“The thing we took into consideration was ‘What are the MUSD-sponsored courses that we have some oversight and control of?’” Koide said. “That was part of it, but we always think about our students, social and emotional wellbeing… We’ve seen in past history, when students overload with too many difficult courses, how that can negatively impact their health and well-being.”
Senior Justin Shen has taken four college classes, he said. Shen mainly took classes such as American government or psychology to fulfill his general education requirements, he added.
“GPA is a bonus,” Shen said. “It gives me more incentive to take it (the classes), but it’s not the deciding factor, at least for me.”
Koide says that she hopes that the change won’t deter students from taking concurrent courses.
“What I’m hoping is that our students are also not just trying to up their GPA, but are trying to become well-rounded learners, and they’re seeking extra subject area content, knowledge, or just wanting to be better prepared for whatever lies ahead,” Koide said.
