What percentage of first year college applicants have unweighted GPAs of 4.0? I understand GPA must be taken in context to course rigor & type/status of high school, but disregarding those factors, how common are 4.0s?
My son’s school rejected over 10,000 4.0s last year. They do make a minor weight adjustment up to a max of roughly 4.3, and didn’t say if that was weighted or unweighted, but it does paint a picture. GPAs are pretty inflated these days.
Our high school has a graduating class of about 750 and has about each year. Of those about half take an unchallenging schedule of non honors classes.
Yes on cc it is very common. In the real world it happens in all college prep schools charter schools home school and private. Regular public schools maybe one or two per class
but common in my definition - not so much. Maybe 50 or 60k out of 2m students would be my guess. How many with full ap schedules and fully uw. A lot less.
4 weighted is a different story. Many more
The unweighted doesn’t really matter that much as almost all of the college track kids at my kid’s HS take 8-11 AP classes. (11 is the max you can take at the school) but then you have kids who take online classes and summer classes and university classes also and at the end of the day, you’re comparing apples with oranges with everyone.
I meant to say has about 5 each year. Sorry.
“The unweighted doesn’t really matter” Oh yes it does. It’s weighted that doesn’t atter so much. There are colleges where only the gpa matters, but top holistic adcoms will look at the transcript, too, look for what selections/rigor and grades. They don’t rely on a weighted gpa, which can be misleading. Some hs add a point for AP, some add less. Some add a different amount for an A vs B, etc. That’s your apples and oranges.
Plus many great hs no longer offer AP or never did, but incorporate rigor into regular higher level college prep classes.
And to tackle the original question, how common? For a tippy top, very common to see kid after kid with a 4.0.
You’re pointing out exceptions, which there is to everything in life.
If unweighted mattered, no one would take any AP classes.
Saying the “unweighted doesn’t really matter that much” may be true in the sense that it can include kids taking either challenging or less challenging course loads, but the Berkeley admissions analysis from a few years did show a meaningful boost to the likelihood of admission from having a 4.0UW GPA:
https://academic-senate.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/hout_report_2005.pdf
If you get a 4.0 without rigor, it shows on the transcript, there for anyone to see and not so impressive at a top college.
If AP is offered, of course kids should take it, the right courses, if they’re aiming high. But adcoms at those schools will look at the actual class grade, not your 5.0 for an A in AP versus another’s 4.6 for the same.
And an increasing number of top high schools do not offer AP. Many of the excellent Jesuit hs and now more elite preps. Their work is no less impressive, as all courses are intentionally taught with rigor.
ps The UC calculations are for UC . Most top holistics are not recalculating.
In my experience, it’s within the context to what’s available. Lots of APs means higher weighted. Some schools offer no APs. In those cases, unweighted GPA Is the only GPA. As such demonstrating other ways to show rigor would include number of classes taken, types of classes completed, and acceleration in subject areas.
Grade inflation is real. I went to a high school that ones a 100 point scale. I think I prefer the granularity of that system over the A-F/4.0 scale.
My D’s public high school class had ten 4.0 students out of about 200 students. So 5% – which I think is a lot. This includes all levels of standard/honors/AP level classes class taking patterns. About half were taking more or less the most rigorous course load at the school available (i.e., lots of APs) and the other 5 were not.
After her freshman year the HS went from 7 point to 10 point scale b/c most of the other districts in the state were 10 point. This is undoubtably one reason for the pretty high number of 4.0 graduates.
Our school district awards an A+ for a grade between 98 - 100, which is worth a 4.3. So there is that little extra incentive for students who do really well.
My daughter’s school has 0 with a 4.0 in her graduating class 3.9’s is the best.
I think our school has had 1 in the last 8 years!
I could be wrong, but my impression is that colleges ignore the weighted, because it means something different everywhere. Unweighted is what matters. And for more selective admissions, they expect 4.0 or reasonably close unweighted, WITH a rigorous schedule, whatever that means at your particular HS.
Our public HS had maybe 7-8% with a 4.0 this year, but that was weighted. I’m guessing less than 2% UW. I know where the weighted cutoff for top 2% was, and you could reach it with a couple B’s on the transcript as long as you took a typical load of honors and AP.
I’m always surprised on CC at the people whose stats read something like ‘4.0UW, 1300 SAT’. Maybe my kids are just weird (good testers, not so good at getting As in English) but I feel like any kid bright enough to be getting a 4.0 UW should have a much higher SAT score. So then I wonder if our high school English teachers are grading harder than at a lot of other schools out there…
My DS19 had a 4.0 until last semester… His class ranking was 19 - with a 4.0. Unweighted. He’s still top 6%, but he has a 3.96 now and is ranked 31st. It all depends upon the school and the kids attending.