My son has a unweighted gpa of 4.0 in grades 9-11. He has taken 14 semesters of AP/H and 3 A-G community college courses in grades 9-11 (Spanish 3 & 4 plus a fine art at CC) with 10 additional semesters of AP in grade 12. With this information, it seems his GPA should be 4.0 unweighted and capped at 4.4 weighted. (We’ve used Rogerhub calculator to determine his GPA for the UC and CSU application and it seems to correspond with what we think the GPA should be.)
However, when the CSU application calculates his weighted GPA (in the A-G matching tab), it is calculating his GPA as 4.27. Why isn’t maxed at the max 4.4 since he has far beyond the 8 semesters of AP/H courses in grades 9-11 and has nothing lower than an A?
If we pull out the A-G designations on his CC courses, it raises his GPA. Why does it seem as though the more courses he has taken, the more the unweighted GPA decreases?
Did you report the college courses in the HS academic section or under the College section?
Regardless of the calculated CSU GPA which is different for SLO vs. the rest of CSU’s, the additional HS course rigor will noted by admission at time of the application review.
Crazy, but yes. Above a certain (small, but I don’t exactly remember) number, more honors classes don’t get an honors bonus but continue to add to the divisor, dropping the GPA.
I used the calculator to drop more and more of D22s classes and the Calculated GPA kept going up. It leveled off at a relatively small percentage her actual honors classes.
I remember this happening to my kid last year too. Just like @Gumbymom said the rigor will be noted. And like @RichInPitt noted it’s the denominator of the calculation that increases. The same can happen with high school GPAs. My kid took a second semester B period music class for a couple of years at her school and it was pretty obvious that it dropped her GPA when the grade was added each second semester (all other classes were the same and the grades were the same). Lots of kids that were GPA master managers wouldn’t take the class because of that but my kid really enjoyed it. Don’t worry about all these GPA details. It sounds like your kid has done well in high school. Good luck with his applications.
@Gumbymom Thank you. The CC courses are listed in the college section, but they allow you to assign an A-G designation to each of them. Assigning that A-G designation throws them into the CSU GPA calculation. Even without those marked as A-Gs, his GPA is still less than 4.4.
Thank you for the info regarding HS course rigor being noted - I will let my son know!
@RichInPitt adding to the divisor is exactly what I think is happening! My son is panicked because he now feels like he’s being punished for doing so well and taking more class than he needed to! His strong record has to be taken into consideration somewhere, but seeing that GPA calculate less than 4.4 was really shocking!
@teleia lol at kids being master GPA managers - I can totally see that happening! My poor kid (and his friends) obviously had no experience with that, but if they had to do it again, but might end up master GPA managers too!
Any additional classes of any kind, Honors/AP/IB/Regular, dilute by adding to the denominator. The weighting, the best I understand it, is capped at 8 semesters. Fortunately, and unfortunately for the OP, at least the best anyone knows, Cal Poly caps at 4.20 and considers everyone at or above the same. They all get max MCA points. So, it won’t hurt, but they don’t help like they should. The rigor associated with the likelihood of having taken more math, lab sciences and foreign language, will help in the MCA, again, assuming it’s anything like 2013.
I think he will just about max his MCA points in the course rigor for Cal Poly too, so there isn’t much more he can do. I guess our fear is that without test scores, a whole lot of applicants could have very similar MCA (almost maxed) scores - especially in the really competitive majors like ME.
Oh well! It’s all a roll of the dice anyway. He’s done all he can do! Thanks again for everyone’s help.
He has strong grades. I’m guessing that with that many APs, he’ll have math at least through Calculus A/B, plenty of lab science classes and foreign language classes. He should get strong rigor, if it’s still the same. Any EC leadership counts, no matter how mundane. Also, unpaid work can count. Major related is pretty broad to interpretation. He should be a strong candidate even for ME. Feel free to PM me if you have any questions about the school. My son is an alum (BS/MS ME).