<p>My S has most of his grades weighted since he takes honors classes. He has a 4.33 weighted gpa. Many of the colleges are looking for a certain gpa on a 4.0 scale. I think our high school's weighted grade is on a 5.0 or 5.33 scale. I know he can ask in guidance for his unweighted grade but I was wondering how it is figured? If you got a B+ in an honors (weighted) class do you now have a B+ on the 4.0 scale? I know band at the high school is never weighted. If colleges want your gpa out of a 4.0 scale is it better to just take the regular classes and hopefully get an A+ since it should be easier?</p>
<p>Take a look at this article:</p>
<p>[Calculating</a> Your “Real” Grade Point Average (GPA)](<a href=“How Do I Calculate My Real GPA? | Great College Advice”>How Do I Calculate My Real GPA? | Great College Advice)</p>
<p>Unweighted GPA matters.</p>
<p>Weighted GPA doesn’t.</p>
<p>
If there’s a college out there that cares only about GPA and nothing else, the yes. For all the others, rigor of schedule is important.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s true that weighted GPA doesn’t matter. Weighted GPA is a reflection of rigor of schedule, which as purpleandproud pointed out, is one of the most important factors. But you shouldn’t slack off in your weighted classes thinking the weight will make up for it. You want to get the best grade you can in the toughest classes you can handle. </p>
<p>Colleges will look at the transcript provided to them by your son’s high school, which will have both weighted and unweighted GPA on whatever scale is used by the school. They will carefully consider how well he did in each class and how difficult the class is in general. 4.0 scale is the standard, but you shouldn’t just take easier classes so you can get A’s because it will be noticed and it will be seen as a sign that you’re not really ready for college level work.</p>
<p>Here’s another article that might be interesting to some:</p>
<p>[Weighted</a> or Unweighted GPA Grade Point Average](<a href=“Weighted GPA or Unweighted GPA? | Great College Advice”>Weighted GPA or Unweighted GPA? | Great College Advice)</p>
<p>There’s no simple answer to this question. The top colleges are looking for A’s in mostly honors or AP courses. To the question, “Is it better to get a B in an AP course or an A in a regular course?” I’ve heard Admissions counselors answer at our College Night, “It’s better to get an A in AP course.” They usually go on to say you don’t have to take every AP course your school offers, but they are looking for rigor at least in your areas of interest. Many colleges will also care about your class rank - if your school weights courses it will probably be to your advantage to take advanced courses. I agree with Smithie - slacking off in a weighted course is not a good idea. I have found though, that neither of my kids seem to have been excessively hurt by their decision to take regular over honors or AP English senior year. (They both ended up with high A’s which even unweighted were higher than their weighted grades.)</p>
<p>If you are trying to figure out what colleges are going to do with your GPA - good luck! Few will tell you and I’ve heard everything from - we take whatever is on the transcript - to we unweight to we take off weights and then reweight using our own system. Our transcript actually shows unweighted grades and only shows the weight GPA - so I think the benefit of weighted grades for my kids is limited. My school also includes orchestra courses in the GPA. </p>
<p>When trying to figure out my younger son’s GPA I arrived at:
88: unweighted without orchestra
91: unweighted with orchestra (school reported this one)
94: weighted GPA without orchestra
97: wieghted GPA with orchestra (school also reported this one)</p>
<p>Because there was a big difference between a 3.3 and a 4.0 we used our high school’s acceptance history (thanks to Naviance) and the identification of a sure safety that our kid loved to determine what colleges to target. He was accepted to one school early (U of Chicago) that is not normally thought of as a place where B+ students end up.</p>
<p>There is no simple answer since every school is slightly different on their scale of what constitutes an A, a B, etc. even when you uunweight. I’ve seen parents report here that a 90% is an A at their school. At our school anything under 93% falls into B territory. Then the “grades” are set to equivalents on a 4.0 scale. Our flagship used to unweight everyone’s grades so our school never reported “weighted” grades. They did “weight”’ them with some complex formula that no one understands to determine senior scholars but it was entirely an internal calculation and never reported to colleges. Colleges will use your schools profile to understand what your child’s grades mean in context to the school. So yes, in an “unweighted” situation a honors/AP/weighted class B+ remains a B+ or a 3.5 on an unweighted 4.0 scale. When I went through this with S1 I used to think it was unfair to kids that went to schools where AP classes were not weighted, but now I think I understand that in most admissions situations they ‘get that’ by looking at the rigor of the class schedule and the profile of the high school. So basically one kid’s 3.5 could be really strong as the above poster mentions in the last paragraph compared to another kid’s 3.5 or vice versa. On CC threads unless someone specifies weighted or unweighted it’s often difficult to figure out for comparison what that means to your kiddo, too. Especially the new threads this year 3.0 to 3.3 and the other one about 3.5 kids. One college actually mentioned this is a letter to S2, the letter mentioned is 3.75 GPA…well my “kid” is a 3.5 unweighted on a good day who knows how that college calculated his GPA. Confusing at best.</p>
<p>add to that, many schools consider a B+= 3.3…</p>
<p>It is all not very important. Different schools do it defferently. At D.s school, they did not weigh Honors and had very few APs. As college junior she believes her college prep was superior compared to kids from other schools. It is apparent that HSl itself is more important than grades and 4.15 weighted at one school might mean much higher grade as far as college is concerned than 4.8 weighted from another.</p>
<p>^^amen; here too!!!..college prep is more rigorous at my daugher’s private than honors at the local public HS…</p>
<p>PurpleAndProud, I find your reply (post #3) a bit confusing. If, as you say in your last sentence, “rigor of schedule is important,” then how could it be that unweighted GPA matters and weighted GPA doesn’t, as you say above? The two statements seem contradictory.</p>
<p>Our high school doesn’t even publish an unweighted GPA. There’s only one GPA, and it’s weighted. If you wanted to know your unweighted GPA you’d have to calculate it yourself.</p>
<p>^ she will rip huge benefits at college, promise. D’s AP English was a torture. She got an easy A in college Honors English. Lots examples like this, like she was hand picked by Chemistry prof to be his assistant, D. did not even have AP Chem at her HS. Hard work is never wasted, always rewarded.
Good luck to everybody!</p>
<p>At our public HS class rank is determined by weighted GPA. THey do not report unweighted GPA. Many colleges pay attention to class rank, so even if they recalculate the GPA, the HS’s weighted GPA will have an impact through class rank.</p>
<p>Nightchef, our profile has a list of the “rigorous” classes. It actually says “below are the most rigorous classes” and there is a list. Our school does not have “honors” track classes just classes and AP classes and RR (resource room/remedial) but on the most rigorous list are a couple that are non-AP branded that are tough classes. An admissions reader could glance at that list and glance at the transcript and see which of the rigorous classes a student took then glance at the GPA and get a fairly “accurate” picture of where that student fits into the student body. They don’t have weighted GPAs in college so I’ve come to conclude it doesn’t really “mean” all that much one way or another. There used to be a bunch of kids crying in their soup on the UofM board as they “unweighted” their GPAs.</p>
<p>The UCs, as an example, do their own GPA calculation of the HS grades. They weight up to a certain number of qualifying courses (qualified by the UC). So, for the UCs, taking AP and certain honors courses will have a positive effect on the effective GPA assuming the student would have received no less than a letter grade lower than if they’d taken the non-weighted course. But the UC calculated GPA will likely be different than the HS calculated GPA.</p>
<p>Ah, gotcha. So weighted GPA “doesn’t matter” not as in “doesn’t reflect anything that matters” but as in “isn’t the number the colleges are actually going to use.”</p>
<p>Not necessarily. Some colleges will use whatever GPA the HS reports. Period. They do not recalculate it. Yale is such a school. The UCs, on the other hand, have their own published method of calculating GPA. Some other schools recalculate it according to their own methodology. </p>
<p>It’s just impossible to make a generalization. What IS fairly certain is that if your HS ranks, that will be looked at, and if your HS doesn’t rank they will probably look at the GPA distribution reported in the profile to get an idea of where the GPA might fall.</p>
<p>I am sorry but I don’t know what a UC is.</p>
<p>^^ University of California system (UCLA, Berkeley, UCSD, etc.).</p>
<p>Just an addendum to UC grade calculation. The UC system does not acknowledge any weighted class for OOS, only AP classes. So if your child is in honors math, english, history etc out of Calif., they do not add the weight of an honors class. </p>
<p>This makes it just that much harder if you are applying from out of Calif. Apparently, Calif schools that want the UCs to weight their honor classes have to apply and get approved, but no out of state class will qualify.</p>