GPA Confusion! [South Carolina]

Applying to College
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I’m so confused about how to calculate a GPA. Many of the scholarships we’re looking at require above 4.0 GPAs. (University of South Carolina appears to have a minimum requirement of 4.8 for any scholarship consideration).

Our DS24’s school uses a “weighted 4 point scale”, and he’s earned a 3.69 GPA.

He gets .33 pts. higher for all AP and Honors classes, but regardless of the class type, he does not earn more than 4 points.

He has taken eight honors classes and four AP classes, mainly receiving A’s. . .

When schools are asking for a GPA and we indicate that it’s weighted, a 3.69 looks very low. There doesn’t appear to be any way to indicate that it’s weighted on a 4 point scale.

How do we sort this out??

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Each school weights differently.

The most common I’ve seen is +.5 for Honors and +1 for AP. UF does that.

U of SC will apply their weighting.

I would ask the school what they use to weight. I imagine they will recalc the gpa to their method so don’t worry.

This is the state HS system.

https://sites.google.com/a/lex2.org/bchsguidance/general-information/grading#

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University of South Carolina may be using the GPA calculation described at https://ed.sc.gov/tests/tests-files/eocep-files/uniform-grading-policy-february-2018/ , which can result in very heavily weighted GPAs.

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The links above explain our 6.0 grading scale in SC. No one ever has a 6.0 since that would be 100% college or AP classes. Top of most high schools for GPAs here is around 4.8 to 5.3 or so.

They will convert the GPA into their system.

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Just agreeing not to worry. My daughter’s school uses the more common 4.0 scale with honors .5 and AP/IB 1.0 bump and applied to UofSC with a 4.6 or something weighted and received extremely generous merit from them including invitation to their Top Scholars weekend. They have no issue converting to their scale.

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It was in 2006, but our OOS kid also was admitted and believe me, her GPA was not that high…well…maybe it was when they recalculated…who knows! She received what was then known as the McKissick Scholarship…and it was quite the good deal at the time. She was also invited to the scholars weekend but was unable to attend because AllState was the same weekend. To be honest! We were surprised she got such a nice scholarship from them. She matriculated elsewhere.

My kid also completed the scholarship and honors college application which was a doozie!

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