If you start off with a 3.0 GPA UW in freshman year and end up with a 4.0 GPA UW in senior year, is it just as good if not better as when you maintain a steady 4.0 throughout high school? (If honors/AP/CP classes are not considered) I asked this question before on Khan Academy, and I seemed to have gotten controversial replies. It seems as if a 4.0 GPA UW could be the best possible thing on somebody’s transcript, but I saw that many universities consider upward trends as the most attractive transcript.
In my opinion, steady 4.0 beats upward trend, but upward trend certainly beats steady 2.0.
Steady 4.0 is always better. Just getting a 4.0 Senior year is not enough for the best schools unless there is a reason (you were homeless in prior years). Depends how low your grades were before. 3.0 Freshman year, 3.8 soph, 3.9 junior may be ok, especially if you got no Bs after Freshman year.However you overall GPA would be under a 3.7. Colleges like to say their students had GPAs for all years over X (usually the first 3 years and the first half of the senior, no one cares if you get all As last semester senior year unless you are applying after or transferring or are deferred,0 and that 90% of their students had a class rank in the top 10%
Uhhhhh… A 3.0 Freshman trending to a 4.0 Senior will have an approximate cumulative GPA of 3.5.
How does that compare with another person with a cumulative 4.0GPA?
Upward trends make for good stories and can compensate for poor performance earlier in school, but 4.0 would certainly look better if all other factors are equal. Top colleges want the cream of the crop and these are usually the students who have consistently demonstrated their achievement throughout high school.
I think the point of the upward trend question is to compare two students with equal non-4.0 averages where one was consistently near the overall average and the other had an upward trend. In that case, I think there is some benefit to the upward trend. I’m not sure of the magnitude of the benefit though.
I’d say most of the time it would favor the cumlative 4.0 GPA however if the person truly matured during those 4 years from a 3.0 to a 4.0 I’d say they’d get the same results or the person who has an upward trend will get an edge.
All other things being equal, I disagree. You’re saying a 4.0 cumulative GPA < an upwards trending cumulative 3.8 GPA. I firmly disagree.