Let’s say two students with all As. One has GPA of 4.4, and another one has 4.6. The one with 4.3 has less because the school didn’t provide many AP classes. Will colleges take account of the 0.3 GPA difference very heavily? Or they are at the same level in term of competence?
This: “The one with 4.3 has less because the school didn’t provide many AP classes” means you can’t directly compare them. But what you can do is take the GPAs in context. Is the 4.4 the highest GPA from that high school? Is the 4.6 comparatively low since several others have 4.9s? It depends.
Colleges generally consider rigor of high school record, whether by weighted GPA (often based on reweighting by their own system, since high school calculated weighted GPAs cannot be compared across different high schools) or by looking at the actual course list holistically compared to their high school offerings.
Don’t worry about it…do the best you can and take the most challenging classes you can at your HS.
Admissions do take consideration of the schools the applicants go to. All else being equal, a top GPA student from Stuyvesant will sure beats out a student with 4.0 from an average school even though the second student may argue s/he has taken all the difficult classes they could from the school.
On the other hand, what high school offers is beyond most students’ control. So you can’t worry about that too much. Besides, if one goes to a more rigorous school, they may not get the 4.0 anymore either.
Basically, the top schools are looking for students who can take the most difficult classes AND do well.
I would LOVE to see what a college app looks like on the computer screen of an Adcom once the Common App data, transcripts, and scores have been loaded. How do they manage the data?
For example - as mentioned above -
-Student A has 4.3W GPA, but the school only has 8APs and doesn’t allow students to take more than 5 over their high school years. This student only took 2/5 APs before their senior year (so only 2 are factored into their weighted GPA)
-Student B has a 4.6W GPA, and the school has 15 APs, and kids commonly take 8 or 10 APs over their years, and this student took most of them before senior year (therefore his weighted GPA includes 5 or 6 of these)
-Say there is Student C, who has a 4.1W GPA, but is taking 4 of his/her 6 APs senior year and is applying Early Action (so no grades for this student’s 4 APs.).
All students got A-'s on all their APs.
Which student is stronger? Student B has a higher weighted GPA, because he got most of his in before senior year. Student C could have a 4.6, if his A-'s were in before app time, but they are not because he’s EA.
How does this come up on the Adcom’s screen in the GPA columns? I doubt they are looking at the school profile for each and every application - so the information on the screen must include some info loaded from the school profile (number of APs offered, etc…) For purposes of Merit, these GPA numbers really matter… how do they factor in all this varying high school information?