<p>In the end, EVERYTHING matters just as much as the next thing.
But for the sake of discussion, WEIGHTED GPA/RANK trumps UW GPA. Here’s why:</p>
<p>Student A could have taken majority regular/honors classes with 3 APs by graduation and have a 4.0 UW, but be ranked 100/500
Student B could have taken a very rigorous courseload based on his/her school’s offerings (let’s say, 10 APs by graduation time) and have a 3.85 UW GPA, but be ranked 15/500</p>
<p>Assume all test scores, ECs, letters of recommendation, and essays are the same. Which student do you think Harvard would accept (if it came down to JUST these 2 students)?</p>
<p>My high school didn’t calculate rank, didn’t weight, and didn’t even calculate UW GPA (though that’s not too hard to do). It was incredibly rare to have someone with what would have equated to a 4.0 UW, though, but we still sent ~100 students a year to Ivies. It seems that top colleges wouldn’t blindly base everything on UW GPA, W GPA, or rank, since each of these can be gamed and only tell a piece of the puzzle (especially since the boost in GPA for an AP/Honors class can be quite arbitrary - I took numerous non-AP/Honors classes that were much more difficult than other AP courses I took).</p>
<p>Phillips Andover. Many private schools that don’t rank have similar results (we certainly don’t have the best college placement results, though we’re near the top). I believe W GPA and rank are valuable in that they show how you did relative to your courseload’s difficulty, but each school’s weighting (if it weights at all) is different and potentially arbitrary - two 3.8 W GPAs at the same school probably don’t even mean the same thing…but it’s clear that they’re most likely better results than a 3.2 and worse than a 4.3. On the other hand, an unweighted GPA shows exactly how well a student did in their classes, just without taking into account rigour. It makes sense to me, therefore, that the colleges would use both to get the best picture, and so both are important.</p>
<p>As far as OP is concerned, like it was said before, it depends on your school. Each school sends the colleges a school profile, so you’ll be evaluated in the context of your school’s program. 4.1 may be a bit low at your school, and it might not. We really have no way of knowing.</p>
<p>I have to say, weighted GPAs can sometimes be completely meaningless. I go to a pretty good school that doesn’t rank, but if you stack our GPAs you get skewed results. I have a UW GPA of 3.92 and a W GPA of 4.33, a friend with a UW GPA of 4.00 but a W GPA of 4.36 and another kid whose UW GPA is 3.92 but W GPA is 4.45. All of these people have taken the same number of APs and honors courses, the difference is that some difficult post-AP courses are not weighted, others are, the system in general is seemingly random. What it comes down to at the elite schools is your performance in individual classes and their difficult, not necessarily a straight up GPA. Uroogla has a pretty good idea about what he’s talking about too, our schools are pretty similar in difficulty.</p>
<p>schools send their profile to college adcoms who are region based. THe ad coms know the schools well. In most cases they take the UW gpa and add an appropriate weightage for each school based on their knowledge. This tends to level the playing field quite a bit but of course nothing is fool proof and can be argued. However it is school profile, knowledgeof school, uw gpa of core subjects and appropriate weightage. </p>
<p>This takes out schools which give a A grade for lunch or B+ for study period…:)</p>
<p>It’s about rank, whether the school officially ranks or not. They have formulas to figure out the rank for schools like Andover and take educated guesses on lesser known schools.</p>
<p>You must consider the UW, W GPAs and rank. Using W you can see how well the student did in the classes, the delta between UW and W shows how many honors were taken (a UW of 4.0 and W of 4.7 shows that many honors were taken). UW shows exactly how well the student did letter grade wise. Finally you need rank to show where the student stacks up against the rest of his peers.</p>