I am a 16 year old junior in Traverse City, Michigan. Recently, I have been talking with a friend downstate who, apparently, is able to obtain higher than a 4.0, because he takes AP classes.
In our school, no matter how many AP courses you take, or how high above 100% your grades are, 4.0 is the highest GPA we can get. I have been taking AT/AP course since my fourth grade year, and am really hoping to get in to a top school.
What I’m wondering is this: do colleges lower all GPAs to the 4.0 standard, taking into consideration classes and grades, or do they just look at the GPA? I’m so worried that I’ll be pushed below others because of my school’s grading process!
<p>What colleges do varies among them. Some recalculate with no weighting but consider as a factor honors and AP courses taken, some recalculate by using their own weighting method, others accept the weighted average provided but factor in high school's different weighting methods (high schools provide to colleges what they do) so you do not get false comparisons, others rely heavily on class rank rather than GPA; moreover, many that look at GPA ignore all but college prep courses -- English, math, lab science, social studies, and foreign language -- and thus any recalculation they do eliminates all grades from other courses.</p>
<p>there are extremely competitive schools where the val gets a 3.7 and the guy with a 3.2 is top 10%.</p>
<p>On the other hand, there are schools (like mine unfortunately) where we have 12 people graduate each year with a perfect GPA, and having a 3.7 puts you WAY out of the top 10%</p>
<p>colleges HAVE to recalculate, since there are dozens of different HS calcs: some use a 100 point scale, some a 4.0 uw, some, a 5.0 w, some a 6.0 scale uw, etc. Also, colleges usually exlude non-academic classes (PE, shop, religion, health), or may even cap some class credits such as in band/performing arts, for admission purposes.</p>