So I was talking to a friend of mine this weekend in a neighboring district. She is more “Type A” than I am (if you can imagine!), so her son is a junior and she’s done a ton of research and school visits, etc…
She was telling me her son’s weighted GPA and then we began discussing the grading scales at the schools. Turns out, at their school, and A is a 90. Where at our school, and A is a 95. My D took 8 honors classes and got A’s or A- in all. But her UW GPA is only separated by her weighted GPA in decimal places…not whole numbers like I see posted here. When I see people post things like “3.4 UW, 5.0 weighted”, I am baffled. My D has a 3.4 UW and like a 3.45 W. But again, an A is a 95. And I think the top honors weight is a 4.4. So is her GPA a 3.4/4.4?
So, I’m wondering. How does PSU account for these differences? Because you can’t compare my D’s W 3.45 to my friend’s son’s 4.2 W when the grading scale is so different. If my D only had to get a 90 for an A, her GPA would be WAAAY higher.
My D asked in a chat once if PSU recalculates GPA and they said no - they only compare you to your school grading scale. They said the NEVER compare you to other students.
It may be a rhetorical question as the process seems cloaked in mystery - but does ANYONE understand how PSU uses GPA (since it’s 2/3 of your evaluation) or have any insight? Because it seems as though students with more rigorous grading scales can appear to have lower GPA’s. But PSU must account for that somehow, right? I know I’m missing something…
How I understood it, since every HS is different, they compare each applicant within the context of his/her own grading scale… Guidance counselors include school profiles as part of the supporting documentation and that is what they review when looking at GPA. My D’s HS only has weighted GPA and an A is 93 - 100. Some schools have
A minuses, B pluses, etc… And some do not… It varies ALOT so they review based on each grading scale. At least that’s what I understood.
As a homeschool parent, I filled out the “Web Application Counselor Form”, where you state your grading system, how you determine the GPA and if you weigh AP, honors, or academic/college prep courses.
From what I understand, PSU is very familiar with different school districts’ procedures and curriculum rigor.
I attended a Q&A with an admissions officer from a major state university, and she said that she has two windows open when reviewing an application on her computer (all pages are scanned/digitized): One is the high school profile, and the other is the individual transcript. Then, they do some sort of scoring based on the component parts and the GPA multipliers from the profile. Even if your school does not rank, many colleges will figure that out from the profile and the applicant pool from your school. In most large colleges, there is a single admissions officer who handles all of the apps for one single hs school, and sometimes all the apps in a certain district, so they have a very clear idea of how many kids they are admitting from a single school AND from a school district. IMHO, The best predictor for an applicant’s success is the 4-5 years of historical data that the hs keeps because it is the most relevant. We used the data from each common data set and from our school’s admissions history to determine “chances”. Where there was great variance between the cds and hs data, we assumed the higher entrance criteria of the two, but having now heard back from 6 colleges, school historical data wins for the most accurate predictions.
Tooth1010, I wouldn’t be too concerned. Being homeschooled, my daughter has no rank, let alone anyone to compare her GPA with. She was accepted back in the beginning of November. (The counselor of your small private school will notify PSU of their GPA procedures.)
all of the above are true. Weighted GPAs calculated by HS are practically meaningless.
How can WGPAs be a whole point higher? I’ve read transcripts where students are given one point for “advanced” classes and 2 for APs, crazy! Others give only 0.5 for APs. I’ll add another wrinkle. Some schools assign a 4.0 to an A- or an A. the permutations are endless.Unweighted GPAs, combined with school profiles and historical data works this out. Schools like PSU evaluate so many applicants each year, they have a huge data set to use. I’m sure they have information on even small private schools.
How can people use the scatter plots considering this spread? If it were me, I’d take the UWGPA (calculated where A=4.0, A-= 3.7 etc) and add one point for honors or AP courses. Not perfect, but closer than relying on overweighted GPAs.
@luvthej that’s exactly what I mean. At my daughters school an A is a 95 and that is assigned a 4.0. A B is an 85 and that is a 3.0. Then we have A-, B+, B- etc…all with different gpa points.
Then add honors weight (.2) and AP weight (.5) and it is all so confusing. I can barely figure out our own schools weighting and so I worry about her record being evaluated…but, I also know Penn State must know how to do this better than me!
It’s just anxiety…these questions are what I’m thinking at 2am when I wake up worry about admissions!
Well, here’s another glitch: The PSU 2014 common data set (section C) says that the average hs GPA of all degree-seeking first-time, first-year (freshman) students who submitted GPA is a 3.57. So did they take all the disparate GPAs and “normalize” them? Second thing is the 3.57 GPA is the FINAL high school GPA and not the average GPA at the end of junior year, which is all that PSU will look at for admissions (I know for sure, because we tried really hard to get them to use the 12th grade interim for my son and they won’t budge). So, using generic data could be very misleading. If I look at my school’s 5 year history, my son is in the green though not at the 50%, and that’s my concern especially when so many others from school have already heard!!
I moved high schools for my senior year and here my WGPA is out of a 4.3, and at my old high school it was out of 5.0 … how do you think admissions looks at that?
@Tooth1010 My guess is your new high school converted your grades to their scale when you transferred in…PSU will only see your grades from your transcript. So, unless you sent them your old school transcript, they will use your current HS transcript which would have your old grades converted on it.