<p>Does it make any difference whether you have 4.63 or 4.56 GPA in terms of acceptances to MIT/Stanford/Harvard ? I have been told that anything above a 4.5/4.8 is treated the same, unless you are a valedictorian. Do these top colleges look at weighted GPA or unweighted GPA ? Do they translate the school GPA ? Please let me know.</p>
<p>Most colleges usually ignore your high school’s GPA and instead recalculates your GPA themselves using your transcript. The method that colleges recalculate depends on the school (some will count freshman year while some don’t, some while factor in non-academic classes while others don’t, etc.). </p>
<p>I don’t think GPA is an ultra-important part of the college application due to the variable, non-uniform grades across high schools and how a B in a certain class might be worth an A in laxer schools or a C in more competitive schools, and so on. I’d say as long as your unweighted GPA is around a 3.85~ or higher, you’ll be good enough to be competitive at top colleges.</p>
<p>Well, most of us here don’t know your school’s gpa weight system so we can’t necessarily tell. Top colleges would recalculate the gpa to make it a based on a 4.0 with 4.0 being the highest but they don’t release their re-calculation methods so we can’t necessarily tell. (A = 4.0, A- = 3.7, B+ = 3.3, B = 3.0 etc. in general). If the difference between a 4.56 and a 4.63 arises from the 4.56 including a B that the 4.63 doesn’t have, yeah it could make a difference. If it’s the difference arises from the 4.63 having an extra A+ the 4.56 doesn’t have, it’s negligible. It would also be useful to know what kind of class rank difference there would be with the two gpas.</p>
<p>Thanks a lot Rob1995. I’m only concerned about the class rank which might be lower for the person with a GPA of 4.56 versus the one with a GPA of 4.63.</p>
<p>@dblazer, I didn’t realize that A- could hurt you this much. I was worried about the class rank part anyways</p>
<p>Regarding A-, most schools only have A’s or B’s. How would colleges then recalculate the GPA?</p>
<p>Usually a grade between 90% and 93% is equal to an A-, between 80% and 83% is a B-, and so on.</p>
<p>Is it A = 4.0, A- = 3.7, B+ = 3.3, B = 3.0 ??? Wow…</p>
<p>It won’t have that profound of an impact, I can guarantee that.</p>
<p>So if the schools themselves don’t differentiate between an A and an A-, then it would be difficult to recalculate the GPA using the scale above.</p>
<p>@centralFC, do you mean there is not difference between 4.56 and 4.63?</p>
<p>Very little. It’s weighted and they know schools weigh GPAs much differently. It won’t make or break you.</p>
<p>Look, I think people really overthink the details concerning grades, GPA, and class rank.</p>
<p>If you’re looking at top schools, it’s pretty simple - unless you’re at an extremely rigorous private or magnet high school, you should be getting all A’s (A+'s and A’s are obviously preferable to A-'s, but unless you have oodles of them, A-'s are acceptable). One, two, or maybe three B’s are okay as long as you try and demonstrate in harder course work or standardized tests that you are capable in that subject (e.g., you got a B- in Geometry. Get A’s in your higher-level math classes and get a good score on your Math SATs and it’ll be fine) . B’s are also more acceptable if you get them either in your freshman year, or if it’s in a really high-level course (e.g., Multivariable Calculus, etc.). </p>
<p>If you do what I said above, you should be hitting higher than a 3.8UW, which is good enough to be competitive at virtually all colleges. That’s pretty much all there is to it. And even if you’re hitting a little lower than a 3.8UW - if you can make up for it with stellar test scores or a really high class rank, because colleges will either think “Hey, this kid is obviously capable, he just slacked off a bit”, or “Hey, this kid is obviously pretty smart, but his teacher are just really tough because he has one of the highest grades in the class.”</p>
<p>Also, this is only concerning top schools like the ones listed by OP. Most colleges below the top 50 are fine with B’s or even the seldom C as long as there aren’t really more of them than A’s.</p>
<p>Remember that grades are a highly unpredictable measure of achievement due to the high amount of inconsistency between differing high schools. I don’t imagine colleges are going to judge a student too seriously for getting a couple of A-'s or B’s.</p>
<p>There is no determined cutoffs or thresholds for GPA since they vary widely in America’s high school in structure and dIfficulty in classes i.e it is more difficult to earn an A at one school than at another school.</p>
<p>Thanks a lot…</p>