Hi, this might be a silly question but I’m a bit confused about the proper way to calculate my UC GPA. My school is on the trimester system. While our AP classes are nearly all three trimesters (except for Econ and Gov), we are only awarded a GPA boost for the first two trimesters, with the third being counted as a seminar that is considered a normal college prep class without honors when calculating GPA. I used RogerHub’s UC GPA calculator but wasn’t sure whether I could count third-trimester AP classes as a “grades for honors courses”, since my school doesn’t. I looked around on the UC app webpage and elsewhere online for answers about this but couldn’t find anything. It makes a significant difference for me; my UC GPA when considering these classes as honors would be 4.56 but otherwise would be only about 4.30.
The third trimester for your AP classes, is this just a review to prepare for the exam or are you still learning new material?
Regardless of how your HS weights the AP classes, you should contact UC Admissions to confirm how the UC’s will weight your AP classes. In general, if it is a year long class, you should get 3 grades with 3 extra honors points in the GPA calculation.
Either way, your UC GPA looks competitive. Remember that the UC’s will look at all 3 GPA’s: Unweighted, Capped weighted and Fully weighted.
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Thank you so much! I will call them tomorrow and ask. We spend a fairly large chunk of the third trimester learning new material, but it varies from teacher to teacher — my history teachers have taught right up to the last minute, while others like math and physics usually start review early.