<p>Out of a senior class of 307, 25 students at my son’s school had a 4.0 or higher.</p>
<p>I know the OP asked about unweighted, but D’s HS only does weighted officially so I have no idea how many received all unweighted “A’s” Out of a graduating class of 394, 79 had a GPA of 4.0 or higher for all 4 years. The class included 9 National Merit finalists and 14 Commended students.</p>
<p>A few years back, my school’s valedictorian was rejected by the University of Illinois because she took very easy classes, even though her unweighted GPA was 4.0.</p>
<p>That incident highlighted the need to change the system for calculating valedictorian status.</p>
<p>D2 is graduating as one of two co-vals this year with no B grades (4.0 UW) in a class of ~700. Last I heard the kid in third place had one B.</p>
<p>There are 28 kids in the senior class of about 400 at D’s HS with all A’s, but that includes A-'s. Most, but not all of them, take a heavy load of honors and AP classes, so their weighted averages are over 4.0 (even if they have A-'s). I’m sure there are a several with unweighted 4.0’s, but there’s no way for most of us to figure that out. I know a kid who graduated from this HS a few years back (he’s graduating from Stanford now) who was nicknamed A+ because he got an A+ in every class where the teacher gave them. FWIW, this is a public school that sends nearly all of its graduates to college and 92% to 4-year colleges, and there are a lot of overachievers.</p>
<p>I’ve got to think that different high schools have different grading philosophies. It could even be that at some schools, most of the honors students pass through a couple of tough teachers that don’t give many As. My kids are in a magnet IB program, and there are only a few each year with all As, even though these are all bright kids (many, if not most, of whom would have probably had all As at their home schools).</p>
<p>Hunt, you are right about there being many different grading methods. I think that is why SAT scores are important. Often the scores will point out how tough (or easy) the grading is. AP test scores do the same thing. At my daughter’s school, they use a 100-point scale and I have yet to figure out how they weight classes. It is not the 10-point boost that was mentioned earlier. No one has over a 100 average and the highest is perhaps a 97, which is very high.</p>
<p>I had thought that it was a big disadvantage to have the 100-point scale because straight-A students would not have more than a 100-point average compared to the 4.0 weighting that gives top students more than a 4.0. However, because I have way too much time on my hands these days, it dawned on me that the advantage is that a student can get a B+ or two and still have a 90+ average, which remains an A average. I hope this makes sense. Fortunately, most schools do send a profile to colleges that explains the grading scale and how it works.</p>
<p>I am amazed to hear of schools where ten percent of the class graduates with unweighted 4.00 GPA’s. Do these schools use plusses and minuses, or do they just go with A, B, C, D, F?</p>
<p>In our neck of the woods, a perfect unweighted 4.00 is rare. The better students still get into selective colleges, despite a few A-'s and B+'s.</p>
<p>^^Same here. As I noted above, we have only two 4.0 kids this year. Some years we have none. And our high school awards pluses and minuses but they do not affect the GPA either up or down. Only the letter grade really counts. Both a B+ and a B- earn 3.00 grade points.</p>
<p>But they do use the weighted GPA to distinguish among the top students to determine Val and Sal. This year we had co-vals since they both had straight-As and took the same AP/IB classes. (They are also best friends).</p>
<p>Here plusses and minuses count in GPA.</p>
<p>A = 4.00
A- = 3.67
B+ = 3.33
B = 3.00
B- = 2.67
etc.</p>
<p>Ties for valedictorian are rare at our public school.</p>
<p>When my older D graduated high school in a class of about 150 students, only one student had all A’s (4.0 unweighted) which was my D who was the val. The school did not weight grades, although she took the most demanding curriculum available and then some (not that it counted for class ranking). While she had some A+s, those got no more points than regular A’s for the GPA.</p>
<p>Our kids’ school doesn’t weigh or rank. What it does is to include school’s profile with the transcript. It will list all the courses offered with grades distribution. If it’s an AP course, it will also list AP scores for the class. Colleges could decide for itself how rigorous courses an applicant has taken in high school and his/her grade compared to other students.</p>
<p>No A-, B+, etc. at S1/S2’s HS. It’s either A or B, etc. (A=4, B=3). A single B for one semester typically knocks a student out of the top 10%. S2 will have an UW GPA of about 3.8 in mostly honors and AP coursework and will likely not be in the top 25%. This does not seem to prevent top schools from admitting the kids, many are admitted to USNWR top 20 schools.</p>
<p>my kids’ school like oldfort’s. I’ll have to check the distrubutions again, but I remember some classes (like Honors Physics) where the top grade was an A-. </p>
<p>I just checked the GPAs for the val and sal (thanks to naviance and a very small class size I was able to identify their data points) and the val had a > A average (A+ gets counted above an A) but I do not know the rigor of her courseload. The sal had a bit under an A maybe like a 3.9 or 3.85 (we do not use a 4.0 scale so I can’t directly compare) and I know she took very rigorous courses.</p>
<p>
+1
I guess that’s why a school profile has average SAT scores. I wonder colleges discount high GPA grades with lower average SAT schools against ones with higher average SAT schools.</p>
<p>Colleges have regional admissions people who, in theory at least, are familiar with high schools. My daughter’s college counselor also visits colleges and sings the praises of the high school though I do not know how widely spread that practice is. Admissions people travel all over and visit different high schools, so they do have some idea. It is trickier the farther away you are from the college or university.</p>
<p>The school profiles tell a lot about a school. I requested copies of transcripts so I could check for accuracy and to get an idea of what the transcript packet included. It’s not a bad idea because mistakes are made. Some schools include academic accomplishments on transcripts (like NHS or Cum Laude).</p>
<p>D’s HS does not name Val’s, Sal’s and does not rank. D was the only 4.0uw in her class of 33 in well known private school. She had to take the hardest classes because of requirements of the selective programs that she was planning to apply. The programs that require ranking calculate it based of student transcript and class profile - I asked that question during one of information sessions.</p>