Hello, First time college mom here…I hope someone here can help me. My daughter is graduating from HS this spring. When visiting colleges and speaking 1 on 1 with the admissions counselors, they often asked if we knew what my daughters GPA is. I used a basic GPA converter on many of the college websites, and I always came up with a 4.0 conversion, so this is the answer Id give …(silly me). She is a straight A student, and as I look at her transcript in my hand, I notice her lowest grades were in 9th grade-- 85 (algebra) 86 (english) We had a bad year that year, but her cumulative unweighted average that year was 92.000.
The following years-
Freshman- unweighted average 95.8182 (cumulative unweighted average 94.0000)
Junior- Unweighted average 94.8333 (Cumulative Unweighted Avg 94.2668
Senior (1st semester) 94.3333 (cumulative unweighted average 94.2778)
Total Summary- credits earned 23.20, Cumulative unweighted average 94.2778
Academic Standing as of 1/30/17
Rank 46 out of 188
Unweighted Avg 94.3982
And the guidance counselor hand wrote on the official transcript 94.3982 =3.6 GPA
Is 3.6 GPA correct? Can anyone tell me which scale or formula is being used?
A quick background as it may apply, She does attend public school, and took an honors chemistry class for 1 semester in her junior year. The others were general studies.
Does a 3.6 GPA seem correct? She has worked her butt off, her good grades don’t come without a lot of time and work, and I was a little shocked to see that a straight A student is not eligible for many scholarships because she doesn’t have a 4.0 GPA. The colleges have offered her nice merit scholarships, but the nicer ones are designated for students with a 4.0. And as almost everyone here knows, additional scholarship help may make or break a childs dream of pursuing their college career. So I am asking you all for help to understand the GPA conversion. Thank you.
Some school say an A starts at 95 or so. So I am guessing yours is one. Our school just reported the number grade on the transcript and somewhere on the cover sheet they explained what they thought their grades meant. Colleges often will recalculate the GPAs to their own 4.0 systems. A 3.6 GPA doesn’t seem out of line for someone who is just barely in the top 25% of the class.
All that said, if scholarships are on the line, I understand your concern. I’d see if there is any possibility that the GCs leave off the 4.0 scale and let the colleges use their own computations.
@jf8038 Huh, that does seem a bit odd to me… I’ve always thought of a 3.6 as being equivalent to a high B+, not an A! Does her transcript list letter grades in addition to the numbers, or just the x/100 percentage?
I would go talk to the guidance counselor and ask for clarification… show some conversion scales (from the College Board, various universities, etc.) and say that you just want to understand the methods they’re using to convert grades to a 4-point GPA, since it seems to be different from the norm. They may have a perfectly good reason for such a scale, but it can’t hurt to ask.
OP, your school doesn’t appear to use the 4.0 scale so the HS GC’s attempt at conversion may be different than how the colleges measure it. In some other schools, a 90 or 92 is still an A. The HS should only report the scale they use and what they mean, and leave it up to the college to convert it.
If you explain this to the HS GC, and tell him/her that you think there is a possibility that your D could get scholarship money based on a 94 GPA, but less likely if you show a 3.6 GPA, they are likely to work with you.
It is also possible that the college will look at the school’s offerings and note that your D only took general studies, and no (or only 1 semester of) honors courses. Some colleges want to reward the students who took higher level courses - hence the weighted GPA. So even though your D got mostly A’s, since they may not have been in the most challenging classes available to her (not sure how many AP’s were offered), she may or might not qualify for merit scholarships.
It doesn’t hurt to ask your HS GC to clarify this.
Thank you for the advise, I will send her an email and ask for an explanation. I’m new at this and just making sure her chances aren’t ruined by a simple miscalculation. If it’s correct great, but if not then I’d rather have it fixed before she commits to a college.
Correct. Along the same lines, for college/scholarship applications, unless it specifically asks for GPA on a 4.0 scale (and even then, there will be instructions on how to convert) the applicant should report on a 100 point scale (if that’s the scale the high school uses)
If 94 = A => 4.0
If 95= A it changes a little but it should still be 3.9 or so.
I’m afraid your gc made a mistake, forgot the scale but going 94/25, since 4= 100/25.
One other thing to consider: You cannot average your scores across all classes. You said in 9th grade she had an 86 (B) in Algebra and an 86 (B) in English. Once those are in, your unweighted GPA will drop below 4.0 and can never again reach an unweighted 4.0. In order to get an unweighted 4.0, you need As in every class you take all 4 years.
Course rigor also plays a role, which is usually addressed with weighted grades, but not sure how systems that use the 100 point scale address that issue. In schools that use the 4.0 scale, a weighted course may be worth 5 grade points instead of 4 to address the additional difficulty factor. Getting a B in a weighted course will keep your weighted GPA at or above 4.0, but your unweighted GPA drops below 4.0.
In our school a weighted course might top out at 105 or 110. So for example my older son had an unweighted GPA of 97 and a weighted one of 103. Either way probably a 4.0.
You can still have a 4.0 if the school rounds up based on a 4.0 and sticks to one significant digit.
One could have a 94 average while getting some Bs, thus less than 4 on a 4 scale.
I would think the only way to "convert’ from a 100 scale to a 4.0 scale would be to look at each individual grade.
Say in a given year a student gets an 85, 95, 98, 97, 93, and 97.
94.17 on a 100 scale
3.83 on a 4.0 scale
(Using A = 90-100, B = 80-90, etc to make it easier)
You may see the 94.17 as an A “average” but wouldn’t equate to a 4.0.
Our school makes it even harder. You need a 96 to receive an A (93-95 is an A-)
I cant thank you all enough for your responses, I am learning a little bit everyday. Our grading system that i just noticed on the bottom of her transcript is as follows A=93-100 B=85-92 C=77-84 D=70-76 F= Below 70 I did email my daughters GC and I will copy below her response. (I omitted names and school with capped words, sorry if it looks funny)
Hi MOM,
OUR SCHOOL has a conversion sheet that converts what a GPA is in
percentage format (ex. 92) to a numerical grade (4.0 scale). It’s
what we always follow when asked to translate to the scale being
asked. If the scholarship committee or school uses a different
conversion rate, they can certainly apply that, however, if they are
looking for a correlation of what the percentage grade would equate to
here at OUR SCHOOL, it follows our conversion. YOUR DAUGHTER is under a
completely unweighted GPA calculation, so any Honors classes are not
weighted. On the application, it asked for the numerical grade based
on that scale and how it correlates to her 94.3982.
All high schools have their own measure of weighted or nonweighted
courses, along with a conversion grade. Sometimes some high schools
have above a 4.0 scale with a weighted system, possibly making that 94
equal to a 4.0. All students in YOUR DAUGHTERS grade follow the unweighted
GPA and conversion scale for OUR SCHOOL, set by the policies for
grading within a specific academic year. I can in the future just
provide the percentage grade. If the committee wishes to provide
their own conversion, that’s fine. We have just always provided the
conversion grade as it applies to OUR SCHOOL for all of our students.
Actually, colleges always use their own conversion policy for all
schools, so what is reported is always different for them. If that’s
the case, then any entity can do the same thing.
Hope that helps. I am sure that you are doing every last thing you
can do to help YOUR DAUGHTER for her future. I believe that everything will
work out the way it’s supposed to and that YOUR DAUGHTER will do just fine.
Keep the faith!
Not sure why this matters at all. The HS presumably sent a transcript to ALL of the colleges. The colleges know how to read those. Many colleges recompute GPA anyway.
Her applications are all submitted at this point…so just wait and see.
Its not the colleges that are a concern at this point. Its the scholarships that she hasnt yet applied to, (and ones that she has passed over simply because some require a GPA higher than 3.6) I just wanted to make sure that a simple miscalculation isnt keeping her from being eligible for scholarships that she should be able to compete for. Like I said previously, I dont understand how a student that pulls straight A’s is not eligible based on her GPA to apply for these, and that is what made it so hard to understand. But thank you too all who have helped explain…
Your school’s transcript says an A is 93-100, and doesn’t list A-'s or B+s. So I am totally on your side now! The best you can do is have them just send the number grades from now on, because I believe whatever the are doing to translate to a 4.0 is wacky.
I am not sure I understand why you are calling her a straight A student if she got two B’s in her freshman year. Unless perhaps those were midterm or quarterly grades, and she pulled them up by the end of the year. Some schools record the semester and final grades, while others only look at the year end.
She runs track too, but once in a great while the runners get sick and have to sit that one out. I don’t refer to them as track sitters because the sat twice in 4 years. But maybe that’s just me.
Me too, I was concerned when her college of choice (and most expensive of course) asked me how the school converts since according to their calculations she is a 4.0 since they base a large percentage of their calculations on the final average which a 94
@mathmom Thank you, I am glad to see that I am not the only one scratching my head on this one. I am not good with numbers, so I didn’t know if it was there, in plain sight and I just didn’t see it? Like I said, this is all new to me…
