<p>Hello CC'ers </p>
<p>I'm currently a sophomore. I saw in my transcript than my rank is 2 out of 848 even though I got all A's since freshman year....just wondering. Do the signs on the grades matter?
What factors determine the class valedictorian? </p>
<p>Also, what is the difference between cumulative 4.0 and cumulative 5.0 GPA's?</p>
<p>I'm really clueless on how it works.</p>
<p>Thank you!</p>
<p>Completely depends on your school. I’m assuming maybe the person above you took more honors classes.</p>
<p>My school doesn’t rank or weight GPA, and it doesn’t do + or - on grades. A 93% is a B and considered the same as an 85%. So the person with the highest unweighted GPA wins. </p>
<p>A 4.0 on a 4.0 (typically unweighted) scale is good.
A 4.0 on a 5.0 (typically weighted) scale is bad.</p>
<p>A 4.0 on a 5. scale is not necessarily bad depending on classes you take. If it’s all A’s, but from unweighted classes it’s okay. But if it’s from all AP classes that you earned B’s in all of them it’s also okay. I don’t see how a 4.0/5.0 is bad., Not great, but not bad</p>
<p>Wow! That’s really good! You’re ranked by weighted GPA so if someone took another honors or AP class than you then they could of gotten ahead. </p>
<p>Factors that affect Valedictorian differ from school to school. I’m not completely sure about this but if two people are really close GPA wise for rank then some school will go back and review each students grade counting a A+ more than A-. Although regularly and A- is the same weight as an a+ in a class. </p>
<p>GPA out of a 4.0 is usually your un-weighted GPA while out of 5.0 is depended on weighted GPA. </p>
<p>Weighted classes usually being AP, IB, or honors classes. </p>
<p>Hope that helps a bit!</p>
<p>To me, it’s equivalent to a 3.0 unweighted on a 4.0 scale (at an average school).
It’s not “bad” in general, but it’s not the kind of GPA that people on this website usually want. It’s definitely different from a 4.0 UW.</p>
<p>Whether the GPA is good or not depends more on your class rank, though. At some particularly difficult high schools a 3.5 would make you the valedictorian.</p>
<p>Some schools use a 5.0 scale for everything, and not just weighted, so that would probably be a different thing.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, I can’t fully answer your question because everybody’s school is different. You need to go in your school’s website or ask your counselor or classmates. But I can tell you a few things. First of all, the maximum unweighted GPA is 4.0 no matter what classes you take if you have all A’s. A weighted GPA is on a 5.0 scale. Examples of classes that are weighted are honors, accelerated, and AP’s. Getting A’s on those can raise your weighted GPA to above 4.0. However, like I said, every school is different. Some, like mine, only weight AP classes. Mine also does not reward or penalize the signs on grades.Some, however, weight any non-regular class and reward students who get A+, B+, etc. If your cumulative weighted GPA is 5 after 4 years of high schools, it means that you never took a regular class (pretty impossible unless gym and art are not required and your school offers an honors, accelerated, AP substitute for everything. College will look at your UNweighted GPA. So don’t get too happy about this. A B on an AP class is still a B and means college will look at a GPA below 4.0. I hope this helped.</p>
<p>I took the same classes as the #1 ranked student in my class including the AP/Honors classes available…hmmm, I wonder how he got ahead…</p>
<p>Thank you to everyone who posted! Really helped :D</p>
<p>^
Online classes, maybe?
Or maybe alphabetical order. 
I honestly think that’s what my school does when two people have the same GPA. I have evidence of it in the names of the people ranked above me, all of whom have 4.0s. How else would they do it if they don’t weight?</p>
<p>Hmm would top 15% in rank good?</p>
<p>^
I should think so, though it’s not as good as top 10%. If you go to some hick school in the middle of nowhere (like me!) it won’t look as good as it would if you went to a more challenging school.</p>
<p>If you take an extra class (in the morning or after school), it will bring down your weighted gpa, since it weighted as a regular class</p>