Ok so - I am currently a junior in an American highschool, taking 4 AP classes. I was previously at an IB-MYP Program at a highschool in Ontario, Canada. My current school calculates GPA as follows (90-100[A]: 4, 80-90**: 3, 70-80[C]: 2…etc). My Canadian IB school did not calculate GPA or even class rank. BUT an 80-100 is an A, a 70-80 is a B and so on. I’ve also read about things like American universities inflating a Candian student’s grades to make things fair, but I’m not sure about that (I believe there’s a Wikipedia page on it). Right now, I can’t see my class rank until October of next year due to school policy, I m also pretty sure I can’t see my GPA. I was just wondering how I’m supposed to calculate unweighted GPA, weighted GPA etc with a mixture of American, Canadian, IB, AP, and regular classes. I’m also terrified about subpar grades in freshman and sophomore years that would’ve been previously considered an A, turned into Bs and therefore negatively affecting my chance of getting into my target universities. Any advice would be appreciated. Also, as a side note, my cumulative 9th and 10th grade GPAs according to my current highschool is a 3.6, which REALLY freaks me out. Any help/advice is appreciated.
correction: forgot to include that 80-90 in the American hs’s GPA rank thing is a B
You’ve got a lot going on! I’m not sure why you are “freaking out”. A 3.6 GPA is pretty good. And you’ve got all of junior year to get it even higher if that’s your goal. Even the tippy top colleges will accept a 3.8 so long as the rest of the application passes inspection. 3.6 is enough to get you into excellent schools across the country. The few schools where it might matter are auto admits in CA or TX, maybe a handful of others. But really, you’re doing fine, and you will have excellent choices.
You don’t need to worry about translating or calculating GPA - the colleges will look at the classes you’ve taken, the rigor of those classes, and your grades, and plug them in to their own calculators that helps the AOs “equalize” across the thousands of schools and different grading systems, etc. You will likely have to submit transcripts from BOTH of your high schools when you apply to colleges, so don’t stress out about trying to merge the Canadian grades into your current school’s system.
Thank you so much for your response!