I’m asking because this semester, my weighted GPA will be a 4.5, but unweighted it will be a 3.6. I don’t like the looks of a 3.6, so I just want to make sure that they will care that all of my classes this semester are AP/IB, so my unweighted GPA looks bad without taking into account my schedule.
Depends on what your school transcript says.
Yes, they care. Depends on the school though.
In most cases, they don’t care about the number itself because all high schools weight grades differently and offer different numbers of advanced classes. They’re also not going to penalize you for taking, say, a music class that isn’t weighted. However, they care about your grades and course rigor, and presumably your GPA is based on those.
Your weighted GPA is higher than your unweighted GPA because they’re on different scales. Your unweighted GPA probably can’t be higher than 4.0 even if you never got a B, but the weighted GPA can go up to 5.0. They’re not going to compare your unweighted GPA to someone else’s weighted GPA.