"A" in Robotics = Lower GPA?

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In this post Joe Petito mentions how "Getting an "A" in the class will actually pull down your GPA if you as a student are on the Honors/AP track" and it got me wondering: How systematic of a problem is this? and Who has solved it and how?

In our district, Joe's description is spot-on. Our robotics team is comprised of a wide variety of students, but frequently attracts a handful of the very top students. These are the students taking many AP classes and many technical elective classes, straight A grades, well over 4.0 GPA, involved in leadership positions in other extracurricular activities, etc. When they join robotics, they are earning class credit for it. For some of them, it's three years worth of class credit. And they get straight A grades in robotics too, the highest grade achievable, the highest grade we can award. And yet, it lowers their GPA. Why? Because robotics is not an AP class, and it never will be.

So essentially, in the current system, Students who take MORE classes, and earn the highest grade possible in those additional classes, graduate high school with a LOWER GPA. It seems counter-intuitive, and I'm not convinced it's something the universities have even realized yet. Are we disadvantaging students by giving them more credits than typical, and by giving them an "A" grade in robotics?

While not a single college admissions representative will ever tell you that GPA is used as a primary discriminating factor, in the words of the great Karthik himself, "If they tell you GPA doesn't matter they are lying to your face." When you look at the numbers of applicants versus the numbers of reviewers, you can be fairly confident that GPA is indeed a primary discriminating factor in the application process. Yes there's weighted and unweighted GPAs (along with at least a dozen other ways it's calculated) but the fact that the "A" grade in the additional class actually brings down the weighted GPA concerns me.

We have observed the process for graduates from our own school. Students who take a minimal number of classes, the most of which are AP classes are the ones getting in to the state's top universities, even for degrees like Engineering, even if they have not taken a single engineering class all throughout high school. It's simple math, and they're using it to game the system.

Meanwhile, students who are really the top students in our school, who are on the robotics team, doing far more than the typical high school student, have somewhat lower GPAs simply because they have taken more classes, not because they have lower grades. As a result of the lower GPAs, they are not getting into these top universities.

Who else has this problem? Who has solved it? It seems counter-intuitive to stop awarding course credit for robotics.

I think the Dean's List award and FIRST scholarships are a good initial step toward solving this, but how to we do more to get universities to realize the value of students who participated in FIRST Robotics and other Career Technical Education programs in high school? Do they really want a freshmen class of engineering students who have never turned a wrench?