Confused about GPAs??

I’m confused about GPAs. I asked my guidance counselor what scale my GPA is out of and she said, “The computer does that.” On naviance next to “weighted gpa” it says 3.9 and next to “unweighted GPA” it says N/A. Does this mean my school just doesn’t have unweighted gpas? And is my weighted GPA out of 4.0 or 5.0? My friend at my school asked her guidance counselor and she said it was out of 4.0, but I see everyone online saying they have weighted GPAs of “4.14” or numbers over 4.0. So is it possible my school just does weighted GPAs out of 4.0? Sorry I’m very confused.

@galactoc It really depends on your state and sometimes your specific school. Some states have standard grading scales for all public schools. Some leave it up to the districts; privates are often all over the place. Google the name of your school and “school profile.” Each school provides a school profile to send to colleges that lists the graduation requirements, gpa ranges, class weighting, test score ranges, advanced classes offered, etc.

That’s the way it worked at my kids HS.

As my kids schools, if you got all As you would have a 4.0 unweighted on a 4.0 scale. If some of those As were in honors classes, one would earn a bonus point of 1.0. The bonus points did not change the 4.0 scale. So one could have a 4.2 out of 4.0 weighted.

Ask your school registrar for a copy of your transcript that could have more GPA calculations. Look at your school website for your school profile.

Different schools calculate GPA in very different ways. This makes it almost impossible to compare GPAs from one school to another. If you think that you are confused, then you probably understand all of this.

One way of measuring unweighted GPAs is to count any A as a 4.0, any B as a 3.0, any C as a 2.0, and so on. Then take the average over all courses. This is the only way that I have seen that creates a common GPA measurement that could be used across all schools.

Some schools will give a 4.3 for an A+. This is one way that it is possible to get a GPA over 4.0. Thus “unweighted GPA” might mean that honors and AP classes do not count extra, but might still count +'s and -'s in some schools.

However, colleges and universities will look at your actual grades, and will look at the rigor of your classes.

Chicago Public Schools have the following values implemented system-wide for weighted averages. I think it is used in many other schools as well.
Standard classes - A = 4, B = 3, C = 2
Honors A = 5, B =4, C =3
APs/IBs A = 6, B = 5, C = 4

Ask your GC again or ask someone else in the school’s admin. There are many, many different ways to calculate weightings and no one here can give you an accurate answer as to how your school does it.

“The computer does that” is just a pathetic, lazy answer. Is it not defined in some type of student handbook? Ours is well documented - it shouldn’t be a secret.

Wow thank you everyone for the help!! I think I’m going to look up my school’s handbook to see if I can find any rules and if not just try and ask my guidance counselor again.

Sounds like your guidance counselor doesn’t want to bother finding out. Not a very informed person to be offering “guidance”.

You can calculate your own unweighted GPA using your academic record.

For each letter-graded academic course, count A=4, B=3, C=2, D=1, F=0. Add up these grade points, then divide by the number of grades to get the GPA (grade point average).

Yes, there are variants where +/- adds/subtracts 0.3 or 0.33 (e.g. B+ = 3.3 or 3.33). You calculate such variants as well if you wish.

@TomSrOfBoston I agree… she’s really unhelpful most of the time so I try to ask stuff on this website

Come to California. Here GPAs are changed based on your zip code (or your high school’s address) when applying to CA universities.
No need to understand your GPA. Just do the best you can.

I use this to calculate my GPA. It shows you a weighted and unweighted version: https://gpacalculator.net/high-school-gpa-calculator/

But it honestly doesn’t matter. Since GPA is calculated differently at all schools, colleges just take your transcript and recalculate your GPA however way they want to do it. So all you can do is try your best in the most challenging classes that you can handle.

Really depends on the school. At my school, there is only a weighted gpa: An A in a reg class is 4, honors is 4.5, AP/Advanced/DE is 5. You lose/gain .3 for a -/+. You just add up your combined gpa and divide by the number of classes. Makes it really hard for ppl to go very high since so many reg requirements/electives bring the weights down.

They aren’t. Unless you are referring to additions given by some CSUs to local area applicants.

But you can calculate an unweighted GPA by just dropping the extra .5 or 1.0. A=4, A-=3.67, B+=3.33, etc., for all classes and do the same math. That’s typically a lot more consistent than weighting schemes.

Many schools also weight by hours, so a science class with 7 classes a week (2 lab periods) is weighted more than a gym class that meets 3 days a week.

My issue with that site is that it doesn’t state it’s assumptions and doesn’t allow you to change them. It allows 4.33 for an A+ and adds 0.5 for honors and 1.0 for AP/IB/dual enrollment. It only provides a GPA for this set of assumptions, which can’t be changed. None of these is applicable to my kids’ high school.

@RichInPitt Sorry for not mentioning but yeah, I only ever really look at unweighted GPA (it lets you do that) and since my school doesn’t offer A+'s, I never include it (no matter how high my A in a class was). I think in general, it’s best to only look at the unweighted GPA because every school has its own set of assumptions.

Agreed - unweighted has many fewer variables and is much easier for comparison. Weighting is pretty much a free-for-all.

I just wish they would clearly state it. The ability to alter the factors would be a bonus. But I don’t think there will ever be a consensus on “weighted GPA”.

I can just continue to brag that my D’s 5.4 is better than everyone else ;).

Some students from South Carolina may beat that:

https://ed.sc.gov/newsroom/school-district-memoranda-archive/uniform-grading-policy-revisions/south-carolina-uniform-grading-policy/
https://ed.sc.gov/newsroom/public-information-resources/uniform-grading-policy/

This just shows how meaningless weighted GPAs are. This looks like it is what our school district recently did away with - allowing students to take more courses to get more bonus QPA points, leading kids to pointlessly take on-line honors/dual enrollment/AP courses of little value.

Ours now caps the max earned each year, and it can be done in the normal 8 course day (though it requires 6 AP courses Jr and Sr years)

fwiw, the max is actually 5.56 - running her grades to date, and similar grades in the future, against the SC method, gives a 5.574. I’m sure someone will be in that range or higher.

I’m not a fan at all of changing GPA by each individual grade number. A 98 is worse than a 99 is worse than 100? Just puts way to much stress on kids for every individual number. My D recently lost a point for the exact same answer for which her friend received full marks. She laughed rather than freaking our because it lowered her grade from a 100 to a 99 (rounded down from 99.4 - now back to 100). She puts enough pressure on herself to keep all As - I can’t imagine what she’s be like with this model.

And the kids on a 100 point GPA scale are obviously smarter than everyone with those puny 4.x and 5.x GPAs anyway…