From what I have seen, different high schools do this radically differently. Grades that are 3.6 at one high school might be 4.0 at another high school. As one example, the public high school in my town counts a 97 as an A+, but only a 3.7 for a normal “CP” class. You need a 98 here to be counted as a 4.0. I have heard of high schools for which any A is a 4.0, even if it is only a 90.
I have also heard that universities generally recalculate GPA using their own scale before making admission decisions. As such I has always taken “reported GPA” as a relatively vague number.
@DadTwoGirls thanks, I learned this the past 2 days, and I have to say, I’m pretty shocked that schools have to follow the same teaching plans, curriculum etc. Yet schools can grade based on their own methods. It blows my mind…and brings 3 words to mind… common core math, it might actually make sense one day…
I think what you need to do is assign every one of her “As” a 4.0 and “Bs” a 3.0 and divide by the number of grades to get her 4.0 GPA conversion. The kids at my D’s school take 8 classes a year, so two Bs isn’t going to have as much of an effect as a child who takes 6 classes a year.
I like the percentage idea. My D had one “B” and it was an 0.3 points from an A (literally less than one test question). Her school doesn’t round up.
I think that you need to just inform the college that your school grades on a 100 point scale. Ask them how do they convert a 100 point scale to 4.0 GPA scale (their opinion is the only one that is really going to matter).
@sybbie719 that would be great, but for some reason the school is providing the conversion and the conversion seems unnecessarily harsh. If you translate the overall GPA 94+ to the 4.0 scale - it should be a 4 according to them as they say that’s an A. I took my calculator out and assuming five academic courses a term with 4 B’s and the rest A’s I got a 3.71. (I assumed semester grades to account for only half of senior year.)
There is so much differientation as to how schools calculate GPA. Some PE in the overall gpa, advisory and courses that other schools would not. Op needs to find out who her regional admissions officer is to see if they are familiar, with her school and how they look at her school. Are some schools who look at an A as a 90+ while others would view 90-94 as an A- 3.7gpa treating the kid with the 90 gpa and the kid with the 94 gpa exactly the same.
I have seen schools where a 90 was a 3.7, 91 =3.75, 92 = 3.8, 93 =3.85, 94 =3.9, 94.5 =3.95 and 95 = 4.0
Tutumom’s formula will give you the worst case GPA IMO. My kid’s school did this because they followed the UofM formula for calculations and it was not a school system with inflationary grading practices. In other words if you got an A in an AP class you most likely got a 5 on the test. B in the class/4 on the AP test and so on. 93 and lower was a B at their school which was a tough pill for me to swallow because I had one kid that consistently got 92s so his unweighted GPA reflected “lower” than many kids from other districts especially for out of state colleges and universities who weren’t familiar with his particular high school like in-state colleges and universities were. But it’s just a fact of life to deal with in this crazy college stuff. Generally their standardized test scores correlate to their GPA and that helps. It did for my kids anyway. The high school profile also gives admissions folks a glimpse into the high school and the rigor around grades relative to curving.