<p>I heard that some colleges give 4.5 for A+ (eg. Stanford)... but my school only give 4.0 for an A+, which result in my gpa beling lower than those students studying at schools that offer 4.5 for an A+. So when I apply for grad school, do they take in consideration that an A+ at my school is a 4.0 not 4.5? or do they recalculate my gpa by using 4.5 for an A+ rather than 4.0?</p>
<p>do not recalculate your GPA. Use whatever YOUR school considers your GPA to be. If you recalculated, and reported your GPA as a 3.8, and your transcripts say that you have a 3.4, then you look like a grade-inflating liar. Besides, I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that schools that hand out A+'s are in the minority in the first place.</p>
<p>Most applications ask for the scale also, so this won't even be an issue. If they don't, just report it as is anyways. They will get the scale with your transcript.</p>
<p>You don't need to recalculate (unless specifically asked), and generally grad school admissions committees won't recalculate. But they will see your grades on your transcript, and they will of course understand what it means if you have several A+ grades on your transcript.</p>
<p>does A+'s mean am getting my grades easily .. and not considered as something good for the adcoms ???????</p>
<p>The other thing to remember is (as I understand) that most grad programs frankly do not particularly care about your GPA (assuming you are in the 3.6+ range)--assuming you have an excellent GPA, most programs will look more at other sources of information such as your research, work, internship, etc. experience as it relates to the field you are pursuing as well as how your interests fit with that school. From what I have been repeatedly told, grad schools tend to use GPA as more of a disqualifier than anything else--in other words, if you're below a 3.4 or whatever, they simply toss your application without considering it, but these thresholds are usually set very low to allow for candidates who are otherwise stellar but did not excel in undergrad because they were focusing on other things (like research or working in the field).</p>
<p>Finally, I want to qualify this by saying that it specifically applies to those pursuing Ph.D. and Psy.D. Clinical Psych programs (which have very low acceptance rates), although I suspect it applies to many other programs as well, hence my posting it here.</p>