About GPA's

Parents Forum
41

<p>JerseyShoreMom,</p>

<p>Here is what you really need to do to convert from the % scale to the 4.0 scale, to obtain an unweighted GPA. It requires some calculation, but it is quite straightforward.</p>

<p>First, list the semester grades in each course, in terms of % (if the semester grades are on the transcript issued to colleges--otherwise, list just the end of year grades).
Next, see whether your school offers an interpretation of the % scores as A, B, C, D, F, on the grade reports or transcript. Many do. If your school does this, then next to each of the % scores, write down the equivalent letter grade.
Now, assign a number to each of the grades: A = 4, B = 3, C = 2, D = 1, F = 0.
Then, take the average of the numbers. That gives the unweighted GPA on the 4.0 scale.<br>
You can compute an academic average by excluding physical education or other non-academic courses.
If your daughter's school shows grade equivalents of the % scores that include A-, B+ B-, etc., then I'd set A = 4.0, A- = 3.7, B+ = 3.3, B = 3.0, etc. and average as above. (There are some other numerical conversions for A-, but this one is fairly standard.)</p>

<p>If your daughter's school does not show any letter grade equivalents, nor provide an interpretation, such as 90-100 = Excellent, etc., please post the minimum passing score at the school, and I'll suggest a conversion procedure based on that.</p>

<p>For a weighted GPA, you're on your own. If you hunt around on this site, you'll see a wide variety of weighting methods.</p>

<p>The Ridgeview High School GPA conversion chart is worthless, to be blunt. Take a look at the numbers: 93 is the minimum % for an A at Ridgeview. Therefore, a student who has received a 93 in every course has received an A in every course, and actually has a 4.0 average. The conversion chart makes a 93.0 into a 3.5 average, which is halfway between A and B--obviously wrong. A student who has received an 86 in every course at Ridgeview has received a B in every course, and therefore should have a 3.0 average. But the conversion chart gives 2.625. Admittedly, it would be rare for a student to just scrape out an A, exactly, in every course. However, a student who had a 96 in every course would have a solid A in every one, and hence a 4.0. But the student would still be listed as having a 3.875 average, if you followed the conversion chart. </p>

<p>There is one obvious limitation of the conversion method, which makes the % scale fairer in my opinion. Consider a hypothetical student who has received a 99 in every course, except for one semester of one course, when the student received a 92. That student does not have a 4.0, technically speaking, while the student who has received a 93 in every course (at Ridgeview) does have a 4.0.</p>

42

<p>cptofthehouse......yes there are many that rate in the top % of the school.</p>

<p>It is a public, performing arts high school rated as the 5th highest academically in our area. The students also have to audition or supply a portfolio for acceptance to this school. For the most part, this attracts students who can take multiple AP's, attend school from 8am-5pm each day, be at rehearsals until 10 or 11p when in a production and still product 4.0+ GPA's and SAT scores of 2200+.</p>

<p>Being a PA hs, there are many grades in the transcript that are electives for the arts conservatory part of it. Those grades have to be taken out so that a true academic GPA can be realized, ie. A's in performance choir or dance or creative writing does not factor into the GPA's that the colleges are interested in. There are not athletics, but if there were, they would be removed.</p>

<p>For many years, even with the high ratings, not 1 student was accepted to Stanford and all of a sudden the school has been discovered by the colleges and we had 6 accepted last year out of a graduating class of 210 students!
The school has been around for 21 years!</p>

43

<p>Here's another example of the problem with converting % grades to a 4.0 scale. Consider 2 students, both with averages of 92.9%:</p>

<p>1) Oliver Crudge has received 20 grades of 92.9 in high school so far. Unfortunately, he attends a school like Ridgeview, where 93 is required for an A and 92.9 is a B. (I'm supposing that his school lists the tenths place on the grade sheet, for the purposes of the illustration--but the same type of problem may arise, even when the grades are all rounded off to integers.) Therefore, Oliver has received a B in every course he took. His unweighted GPA is 3.00 on the 4.0 scale.</p>

<p>2) Justin Luckier has received 18 grades of 93.0 and 2 grades of 92.0. He has the same % average as Oliver, but there is a substantial difference in their GPA's on the 4.0 scale, technically speaking. Justin's 18 grades of 93 all count as A's, and only the 2 grades of 92.0 count as B's. Therefore, Justin has a GPA of 3.90 on the 4.0 scale.</p>

<p>The Ridgeview conversion chart does have the merit of treating Oliver and Justin as indistinguishable, which (in reality) they pretty much are. Oliver would benefit from their conversion of his 92.9% to a 3.488, while Justin would suffer from the same conversion.</p>

<p>The real problem here is the conversion of a finely divided grading scale into a "lumpy" one. If the school had to give grades of A, B, C . . . only, then probably a few teachers would have been a generous to Oliver, rounded up, and given him an A. His computed GPA would reflect his actual performance (at the absolute top of the B's) better.</p>

<p>Probably the fairest conversion between % scores and the 4.0 scale that I've seen was obtained in this way: The converter asked, "What is the best possible performance, in terms of A, B, C . . . that would give a student a particular % as their net GPA?" So, say 93 is required for an A. Then the lowest possible GPA that is consistent with having all A's is 93.0. So 93.0 and anything higher is converted to a 4.0. Of course, this means that some students who have received some high A's and a few B's would be credited with a 4.0 GPA--admittedly a drawback. But even though this conversion is not really "fair," it might still be the "fairest." </p>

<p>If a student had an average of 92.95 (and 20 grades, just to make it simple), then the best possible grades that the student could have earned would be 19 A's and 1 B, which would yield a GPA of 3.95. So 92.95 = 3.95--and so forth. The cut-off for a 3.00 GPA is equal to the lower limit of the B grades, in %.</p>

44

<p>For the most selective colleges... for sake of argument lets say the top 20 Universities and top 12 LACs, the gpa is meaningless in the sense that the adcom doesn't need it. Why? The adcom looks at each and every course the student took, one by one, along with its grade, and comes up with either a quantitative or qualitative impression. Doesn't need a gpa to do that.</p>

<p>It's really not that hard, if you think about the applicant pool to these 37 schools. Half of these applicants will have no or one B 10-12. A couple of Bs? No problem. 4-5 Bs? OK, now we need to figure out what's going on -- does this school ration As? OK, No problem. A C grade? that sticks out like a Kmart blue light special, completely apart from its affect on the overall GPA. It needs explaining.</p>

<p>Do you see what I mean? What does GPA mean when an adcom has taken a full minute to review each and every class and formed a much more thorough opinion of the academic performance than is possible from a single number?</p>

<p>Admittedly, there are schools that don't review the file as thoroughly, such as the top Publics, but even there the adcom reviews the entire transcript to form an impression.</p>

45

<p>QM,</p>

<p>Give it up. How one converts does not matter for college admissions.</p>

<p>Why are you flogging this?</p>

46

<p>I think DunninLA probably exaggerates a bit the amount of care taken with each application at the 37 (or 32 -- 20 +12) colleges he mentions. (And I think it's probably fewer universities that are really taking careful looks and many more than 12 LACs, which get many fewer applications.)</p>

<p>But remember this: The most selective colleges get multiple applications from the most competitive high schools. Often, the admissions office person responsible for a high school will have a VERY good picture of grading standards and course selection there, because he or she will see dozens of applications year in and year out. Harvard, Yale, MIT, and Columbia may know as much or more about Stuyvesant or Exeter than the administrations of those schools know.</p>

<p>For other high schools, it's not so easy, but that is what the GC's letter and profile are supposed to provide, and generally they do.</p>

<p>Here's what to do if you want to get into one of those colleges: Take challenging courses. Do really well in them. If you have time to obsess about the difference between a 91.26 and 92.51, go out and use it more productively than that.</p>

47

<p>Class rank at S1's HS was basically meaningless. There were 405 graduating seniors 44 were ranked #1, all with all A's. There is no weighting of any kind. A student with a single B (no A- or B+ grades) in all of 4 years of HS would be ranked 45 and therefore out of the top 10%, even if that grade was in the hardest AP course and the others did not take the course, or a even a single AP course. Accordingly, both GPA and class rank can be essentially useless comparisons.</p>

48

<p>@newmassdad,</p>

<p>Sorry, someone asks a question, and I can't resist answering in excruciating detail. Occupational hazard.</p>

<p>I agree with you, generally speaking. But I do see a lot of people on this site who think that the conversion to a 4.0 scale is given by:
(% grade/100%) times 4.0</p>

<p>This will give quite inaccurate results--too low if the % average is high and too high if the % average is just near passing (and if passing is about 70%). Hence I think it will be misleading, when people are trying to figure out where their student stands, relative to applicant/admitted student pools. </p>

<p>I also agree with idad's post #47--it was not quite that extreme at QMP's school, in terms of the number of students with all A grades--but the school did have a student turned down at Princeton (not related to us, and several years ahead of QMP) after receiving 2 semester grades of A-;the rest were A's. The student was ranked about #30 in the class as a result. Presidential Scholar candidate from our state. Guidance counselor called Princeton, had a long discussion. Ranking was eliminated in the next year. Could have been a coincidence.</p>

49

<p>I understand the OP's problem. When you look on college websites, they often give data for the middle 50% of their applicants - SAT scores, Class Rank (e.g. 80% of admitted students were in the top 20% of their high school), and GPA. But I never knew if the GPA was all courses or core, and if it was weighted, and if so by how much (our high school says to add .5 for honors and 1.0 for AP, but I know other high schools add 1.0 for honors). I suspect most competitive colleges are quoting a core unweighted GPA. Providence College told us in their info session that they use a core, unweighted 4.0 GPA (but they do include religion class as a "core" if you go to Catholic high school). PC also looks at the level of classes you took - honors, AP, etc, and uses that to assign you a "difficulty of course load" score. They look at the two scores together (maybe using a formula?) when considering GPA. They were the most detailed about how they do it.</p>

<p>The truth is, virtually every college does it differently. And they are each entitled to evaluate the data their own way. Doesn't help us out when trying to figure out if a school is a reach/match/safety, though.</p>

<p>BTW, my Principal desperately wants to get Naviance, but there's no money in the budget. :-(</p>

50

<p>Thank you Lafalum84, that was exactly my issue. I've decided to use my daughter's core, unweighted GPA as a starting point in doing the reach/match/safety analysis. For most of the schools she'll be applying to, applicants will have as many honors and AP classes as she does, or more, so I think that element should simply be disregarded. I'd rather understate her competitive position than overstate it--the worst that can happen is that she'll get into more schools than she expects--a lot better than the alternative.</p>

<p>At least now I feel like I can wrap my arms around this a bit more. One small step for parentkind.</p>

51

<p>Aren't grades fun? Who is the better student- the one with the 4.0 and a study hall or the one with a B in the extra class? The one with a higher gpa and fewer AP's? The one taking fluff classes or... Don't obsess about it. The high schools will have a key to their grading system and the colleges will ferret out what they need. Use the grades as a measure of how well your child is doing compared to how well s/he could do within the system's parameters- a B means much more could have been learned or done... Grades also show how much a student is willing to work within the system- a needed skill in succeeding in college (eg not doing the work, in a timely fashion yields lower grades despite having the knowledge...).</p>

52

<p>Great thread. A lot has been said already. Two points:</p>

<p>1) The "core" 5 academic subjects are always counted, but some "academic" electives (eg creative writing, music theory) are also counted by some colleges. PE and orchestra/choir are usually disregarded.</p>

<p>2) The weighted GPA is useful when comparing two students from the same school.</p>

53

<p>JHS -- My two data points are: 1) Gatekeepers, wherein the Wesleyan adcom expains that they take about 20 minutes with each file... part of that is about a minute reviewing the transcript and noting the rigor, the choices made, the grades. The Stanford adcom responsible for Greater LA said in a speech that she devotes 30 full minutes to each applicant.</p>

<p>I assume Wesleyan and Stanford are decent representations of what happens with an applicant's file in top 20 Unis and Top 12 LACs.</p>

54

<p>See </p>

<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/567740-selective-colleges-admitting-students-below-3-75-gpa.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/567740-selective-colleges-admitting-students-below-3-75-gpa.html&lt;/a> </p>

<p>for a quick and dirty posting of data from twenty-five research universities.</p>

55

<p>DunninLA,</p>

<p>Having watched the admissions process for about 7 years now, I can tell you that what is said publicly, be it in books or speeches, may or may not have much relevance to what an admissions committee actually does. This has been well documented in a series of books and articles.</p>

<p>In some cases (e.g. legacy and athletes) these differences are deliberate. In other cases, I'm sure the differences stem from the fact that the process at elite colleges is just not easy to articulate. </p>

<p>What it means in practice for us parents is that we should not put too much weight on what we "think" the adcoms are doing. We could be wrong. </p>

<p>Instead, we should use common sense and help our kids present themselves in an honest fashion, without trying to "game" the process (if there were a "game", how could we without even knowing the rules?).</p>

<p>Presenting in an honest fashion can include things like making sure the HS transcript and profile are accurate, that things get done on time and in a professional manner (proof reading, anyone?) and so forth. </p>

<p>And don't sweat the things we can't control, like GPA calculations...</p>

56

<p>The thing I can never figure out is how to convert grades from a 100 point scale, which is what our HS uses, to a 4 pt scale.</p>

<p>Our HS neither weights nor ranks (officially, anyway).</p>

57

<p>I do think kids at sort of non-competitive high schools where it's easy to rack up an inflated > 4.0 gpa can be at a disadvantage for selective college admissions. It's just too hard to figure out whether or not their transcripts really mean anything - especially if their AP or IB scores don't support the high grades.</p>

<p>Also, the school profile plays a big role in how the transcript will be interpreted.</p>

58

<p>Consolation, at the risk of irritating newmassdad (#45), I will mention that a procedure for this conversion is given in post #41. It will give the GPA that your child would have had on a 4.0 scale. If you need more information, PM me.</p>

59

<p>how do private schools calculate gpa? is it the same as the UC's, like 10-11 only and 8 honors/ap classes?</p>

60

<p>It varies by school. UChicago, for example, does not calculate a GPA from the student's transcript and simply looks at the curriculum offered versus the curriculum attempted and how well the student did in that curriculum. Chicago looks at all 3 + years, but notices improvement or decline. Others may approach it similarly.</p>