<p>My DD has straight A's . Her GPA is 4.3 . I know that over 4 is impossible. Her school awards each A as a 4.0 and A+ as 4.5. Her guidance teacher told her that her GPA is strong but her course load is not strong. She is in all A level courses with only one AP course. She is dyslexic and she works very hard for her grades.<br>
My question is this. Since she has no honors courses is this GPA considered weighted and if so what is her un- weighted GPA? 4.0? guidance teacher was no help.</p>
<p>Because they award 4.5 for A+, that is considered weighting. In a purely unweighted environment, 4.0 is the highest possible GPA. So they are doing a little weighting.</p>
<p>Has she had straight As in every class throughout high school? If so, her unweighted GPA is 4.0.</p>
<p>^ Agree. Your daughter’s unweighted gpa = 4.0. Her weighted gpa at your school is 4.3.
If she had never taken any honors or AP classes, her weighted gpa using University of California criteria would be 4.0, regardless of how many A+ grades appeared on her transcript. The UC admissions website has an online gpa calculator, if you are interested. The UC system works like this: a grade of A in a regular, non-honors = 4.0; a grade of A in an honors or AP course = 5. Freshmen grades are not included, and there is a limit on how many honors and AP courses can be weighted (it’s 5 or 6). Other colleges and universities may weight students’ grade-point-averages according to their own criteria, but I’m not aware of any school that weights a grade of A+ the way your daughter’s school does. </p>
<p>So here’s the thing. Let’s say you’re Californians, and your daughter wants to apply to Berkeley. Her weighted gpa might be low for Berkeley, even though she has straight A grades in her high school. Berkeley and UCLA might well be a reach. </p>
<p>If your school has Naviance, you can see where other students have been accepted, waitlisted, and rejected. That will be helpful as you try to identify “match” and “reach” schools. If you don’t have access to Naviance, I would recommend weighting her gpa using UC criteria, because I do think it’s at least somewhat close to the way other selective schools will weight gpa.</p>
<p>I disagree with the last two replies … lots of schools give pluses and minuses and adjust GPA because of the the +/-. Whenever I have seen reference to weighted GPAs the weighting was because adjusments made for honors or AP courses … often something like +0.5 for honors and +1.0 for AP.</p>
<p>3togo, you’re correct that weighting most often refers to a slightly higher grading scale for honors and AP courses. However, the issue of 4.5 for an “A+” is one that has been hotly debated in high schools and colleges recently. As her U of I counselor explained to my niece last year (when niece argued that if there’s an up-grade for a C+ and a B+, then there ought to also be an upgrade for an A+)…“you can have that in a weighted environment. But in a true unweighted environment the top of the peak is 4.0. That’s the perfect score, and there is no higher possibility.”</p>
<p>It’s simply the “Mac-sizing” of GPAs. The small is now a large, the medium is now a grand, and the large is now super. It’s all rather silly. If you don’t like the mac-sizing analogy it’s the Barney analogy. An A can now be an A+ or An A++. It seems rather easy to me for an admissions counselor to have two kids with all As and look at the transcripts and school profiles. All As with no AP, IB or classes the schools has determined are rigorous is inherently different than Student B with APs or IBs etc. The concept of “weighting” is rather silly since it’s not universally applied when you step back and look at it.</p>
<p>I do tend to like the concept of weighting for honors and APs. In my (and my daughter’s) experience, those classes truly are more difficult and an A in one of those should count for more than an A in a regular class.</p>
<p>But I yearn for a universally agreed upon system for this. I know it won’t happen, but how much simpler all our lives would be if high schools/colleges could just agree on a standardized system.</p>
<p>Ok, now I’m going to go wish for uniformity in cell-phone plans and insurance contracts, and, while I’m at it…how about clarity in the tax code? Anyone want to join me in my little fantasy-world?</p>
<p>This is why colleges have to get an explanation of the grading system from the HS, and why most colleges recalculate GPA using their own system.</p>
<p>If B+ is 3.33, then I don’t understand why A+ would be 4.5 instead of 4.33, but I quibble.</p>
<p>Our HS has a numerical grading system, and both W and UW are calculated from the numerical scores. I actually like this sysem for ranking, but it did put my kids at a disadvantage for scholarships when the numbers were converted to 4.0 scale. First they convert number to letter, and then letter to 4 point scale. Anything over 93 then becomes a 4.0. But 70-74 is considered a D, or 1.0. (There is no C- or D+ in our system.) S2 had pleanty of 98-100’s and a few 72-74’s. I thought this system artificially drove his 4.0 GPA lower than it should be. (Also, as a math geek, the non-linearity / assymetry of this method drives me crazy…)</p>
<p>To me, the fairest system would be numerical, with agreed-upon weights (or added points) for honors / AP. Or, as a few colleges do, take students GPA and compare to the highest GPA in the class.</p>
<p>momofsongbird – Unless any of us CC posters lives in the same school district that you do I don’t think we can tell you for a certainty whether or not your daughter’s 4.3 is weighted or unweighted. Ask you daughter’s guidance counselor or take a look at your High School Profile to see how they calculate GPAs. I’ve seen at least 30 different methods used to calculate and weight GPAs by high schools within a 50-mile radius of my hometown. There is no national, let alone State, standard for calculating GPA. (Well, at least no State standard in NYS)</p>
<p>If she has had all A’s, no A-, her unweighted GPA is definitely 4.0; Good for her!</p>
<p>There is no lack in grading inconsistency. E.g., our HS does not give a gpa bonus for college classes, because “the classes are not honors or AP.” Or consider the fact that schools ignore how old the student is when a class is taken. Does anyone really think that a 12 year old taking calculus has the same aptitude as a 16 year old, if they get the same grade ?</p>
<p>I personally have concluded, that in the US environment of rampant grade inflation and class differences, the best available metric is AP test grades. I suspect that the selective colleges agree with me. AP tests have another thing right, too: students do not have to take a class to test.</p>
<p>OP: if your student has not taken an AP or IB rich class load in a school where the opportunity existed, that puts her in the second tier of students behind those that did, and did well in those classes. 4.0 or 4.3 will not matter.</p>
<p>hudsonvalley51, I think you meant to reply to the OP, frog09, not me. She was the one who posted the 4.3 GPA.</p>