Do colleges only care about the GPA itself? Or which grades recieved for each individual class?

For example, B+s drag the GPA down a lot - All B+s would be a 3.3 GPA, which is really low, but getting B+s itself is not THAT bad to be dragged down to a 3.3

Would all B+s be looked at the same way as 5 As and a F, which would be arround the same 3.3 GPA

Also, do colleges check which years the grades were earned, as it is my freshamn GPA where i had multiple B+s, and straight As after that.

Thanks

They do look at individual grades and often recalculate your GPA to meet their priorities. Meaning sometimes they will drop music/art/gym grades, or weight honors or AP class grades, or not consider freshman grades at all. They also look closely at the difficulty of the classes you chose.

They will notice an upwards trend and they often cut some slack to students with lower grades in 9th grade because they know it’s a big year of adjustment and maturation. The UC schools and Stanford don’t even include 9th grade in their GPA calculation for that reason.

And all B+ grades would tell me that I was dealing with a consistently B+ kind of student, whereas all As and one F would make me think I was dealing with an excellent student who hit a road bump somewhere and I’d be looking for the explanation for the exception to an otherwise stellar performance. Which is one reason (thought not the only one) why colleges ask for your transcript rather than merely asking your school to provide a GPA and the guidance counselor assessment of academic rigor.

Colleges will look at your actual transcript. A highly selective college is going to recalulate an unweighted GPA excluding PE and perhaps Music. They will be interested in your overall unweighted GPA over the 3 or 3 1/2 years. If it’s lower than say some number, maybe 3.5 - 3.8 depending upon the school its going to be a problem. Then they are going to look at grades in particular classes. They probably aren’t going to agonize over which classes you got a B and which classes you got an A in but any C grades or lower are going to be something they want to understand and they will expect either counselor or you to address eleswhere in your application