<p>I've asked this many times and gotten different answers (even from teachers and advisers). So if you answer this, either state your uncertainty or be very certain of whether they do or don't.</p>
<p>And by count I mean are they viewed as worse than As when applying to the colleges.</p>
<p>If it's on a school by school basis, could you tell me who out of these colleges count them as worse than As (if you know):
MIT
Stanford
HMC
CMC
Pomona
UCs
University of Michigan
Washington University in St Louis
CMU
University of Pennsylvania
Cornell
Northwestern
RPI
Dartmouth
Brown</p>
<p>(obviously this is not my final list, just saying...)</p>
<p>A- is an A according to your GPA unless your school does it differently. Some schools make an A- a 3.7. If your school doesn’t do that there is nothing to worry about.</p>
<p>But colleges can see your transcript. Can’t they recalculate it with the A-s as 3.7?</p>
<p>A’s look better than A-'s.</p>
<p>Some places may not place as much importance on the distinction between an A- and an A, but no one is going to say</p>
<p>“We would rather have you get A-'s instead of A’s”</p>
<p>Your rank in class is very important in admissions. Even if your school does not officially rank, it very likely provides colleges with grade range information, typically for each decile. A 3.7 UW GPA (all A-s) will rank substantially below a 4.0UW average in most competitive high schools, conceivably 3rd decile versus 1st.</p>
<p>So if an A- is no different from an A in your school’s ranking process and your school writes A on the transcript for the A- then A- doesn’t count.</p>
<p>But will some teacher mention A- in a letter of recommendation, or if A- actually appears on transcripts and some admissions officer chooses to remember it as an A- rather than an A. Well no body knows.</p>
<p>Yeah my school writes A-s on transcripts but calculates GPAs with A-s being the same as As. We don’t have class ranks, but I’m getting the feeling, from what administrators and those kinds of people are saying, that when they calculate what percentile range you’re in, they count A-s as being the same as As also.</p>
<p>I’m sure As are considered better than A-s… Why wouldn’t they?</p>