<p>I was just wondering whether or not Johns Hopkins has its own method in calculating high school GPAs (do +/- not count or is freshman year excluded?). I appreciate anyone's responses!</p>
<p>You would think there is an easy yes/no answer to this question, but unfortunately there is not. GPA is a really tricky admission statistic for us and one we typically do not publish. Every school (and I mean EVERY school) computes GPA differently, have different weighting systems, have different grading systems, etc. For this reason there really is no way to quantify an average GPA, or even what a low GPA would be considered. </p>
<p>For statistical purposes we produce an average, unweighted GPA that would be considered a "recalculated" GPA. Many publications require certain admissions statistics and GPA is one of those, so every year we must calculate an average GPA even though we strongly feel this is a misleading admissions stat. The re-calculated GPA takes your grades in the main academic subjects (english, math, science, history, and foreign language) for 10th and 11th grade and places it on an unweighted 4.0 scale - and yes +/- are considered.</p>
<p>The important thing to note though is that this statistical GPA is not what admissions counselors will base their decisions on. We evaluate the complete transcript - up and down, left and right, over and over - and do not base our decisions on this recalculated GPA.</p>
<p>Hope that helps.</p>
1 Like
<p>how would you take into account if a school doesn't include a + grade or a - grade.</p>
<p>Admissionsdaniel, what about IB students? How does JHU calculate an IB GPA on a US 4.0 scale? do they take into account that the IB is harder than most HS curricula? thx :)</p>
<p>Thanks, Daniel. That was a very helpful post.</p>
<p>what about differences in grading scale? Most schools have 10 point scales, 90-100 is an A, etc, and use +/-. My area is odd...94-100 is an A, 86-93 B, etc...and we don't use +/-
Without weighting, my GPA would drop significantly because my classes are nearly ALL weighted (mostly APs).</p>
<p>Well, Daniel just said that they only recalculate the GPA because they have to, and they hardly use it in determining admission. However, just because you take AP classes doesn't make it OK (for admissions standards at highly selective schools) to get Bs in them. They are college level courses and i'm sure that most kids at schools at the caliber of Johns Hopkins have earned mostly As in them. But, the fact that you did take the hardest courseload will definitely help you. What do I know, though.</p>
<p>I hesitated to post a response to Jeffz26's initial question about GPA, as I knew it would open the doors for a multitude of questions and concerns. Let me once again state, that the re-calculated GPA I spoke of was for STATISTICAL PURPOSES ONLY. With that in mind, let me respond to other questions:</p>
<p>fastfingers: if a school doesn't include +/- grades that is OK, and in no way will it affect the review of an applicant's transcript. The re-calculated GPA would then just be based on letter grades -- A = 4.0, B = 3.0, C = 2.0, etc. When +/- grades exist then it is A = 4.0, B+ = 3.7, B- = 3.3, B = 3.0, C+ = 2.7, etc.</p>
<p>M4gici4n: the re-calculated GPA is UNWEIGHTED so the rigor of the courses does not factor in. B+ in an IB course, AP course, or regular course is always going to be a 3.7 (and so on). But the important point to remember (that is why I keep saying it) is that the re-calculated GPA is just a statistical GPA. It is not reviewed in a vacuum where we ignore rigor. Rigor is a major factor in the review of a student's application. (Jeffz26's interpretation of my remarks is a good one to a degree.)</p>
<p>mollypockets: Yes, we do use the school's specific grading scale when computing our re-calculated GPA. Every transcript we receive comes with a high school profile and we use that profile to understand how a school computes their school specific GPA. </p>
<p>REMEMBER ONCE AGAIN...The GPA I am speaking about is just for statistical reporting. We look at EVERY ASPECT of your transcript -- rigor, course selection, grades, trends, high school profile. We compute all these factors and many more when making our academic assessment of each applicant.</p>
<p>k thx sounds good ;D</p>
<p>"A = 4.0, B = 3.0, C = 2.0, etc. When +/- grades exist then it is A = 4.0, B+ = 3.7, B- = 3.3, B = 3.0, C+ = 2.7, etc."</p>
<p>Typo?</p>
<p>Good catch scorp...
CORRECTION TO MY POST ABOVE:</p>
<p>+/- scale is:</p>
<p>A+/A = 4.0
A- = 3.7
B+ = 3.3
B = 3.0
B- = 2.7
C+ = 2.3
etc....</p>
<p>(((This is what happens over the summer. Us Admissions counselors totally forget about GPAs and 4.0 scales. Ask the question in the late fall or winter, and I could provide a correct response in my sleep.)))</p>
<p>just wondering, so is this the same way the average gpa of 3.7 displayed by us news is conceived?</p>
<p>I have no idea how US news computes their average GPA -- you should review their methodology descriptions on their web site.</p>