So I took three AP classes my junior year (microeconomics, macroeconomics, psychology). I know that colleges only calculate GPA with your english, math, science, history, and foreign language grades. If I took these AP courses, does that boost my GPA that the colleges are going to be calculating?
Those AP courses would be considered part of your academic GPA. Colleges will calculate your GPA based on their own criteria, but these classes would boost your HS course rigor in the eyes of the colleges.
Yeah, I had IB business and IB Psych, which are not core classs, but I called them and they said that they would.
How on earth do you “know” this? Colleges calculate gpa by ways of their own choosing, and may even decide to look at a few different calculations. What they include, and how they weigh it, are choices each college makes.
^^^A few colleges do put how they recalculate GPA on their website.
While true, every college is free to determine how or if it recalculates GPA, and is under no obligation to share their metrics with the outside world.
Colleges that recalculate GPAs usually count 5 categories:math, science, English, social science, and language. Econ and psych should fall under social science.
^ Above is correct. A lot of colleges use only college prep courses in calculating GPA but the five college prep areas – math, English, foreign language, lab science and social science – include a lot more in the social science category than just history, including economics and psychology, and there is no college I am aware that limits the social science category to history. The kind of courses that colleges typically do not rely on for determining admisison are things like driver’s ed, health, word processing, vocational courses, and PE, and some use art/music and others do not.