<p>In my school, we're taking all of our finals this week. Today I had the final over Calculus AB and she intentionally gives a problem that we did not know how to do 33% of our grade. She literally told me so when I went to ask her, that "we could not do the problem with our current knowledge" (we could not integrate or derive a pos-vel-accel problem, still lost). However, our class was the second to last class to take the final, and many of my friends divulged to me that they had asked others for the questions on the test and looked them up online. Now that I know there is not going to be a curve, I'm pretty upset. I had to keep my 90, however this was the last grade. To digress, in History, we had an essay comparing two completely different figures, Qin Shi Huang Di and Julius Caesar, and in Chemistry tomorrow, we have an actual AP test as our final (needless to say this is curved, but who knows by how much because of cheating). </p>
<p>My dilemma is that I want my GPA to stand out. However, this seems an impossible thing to do with my teachers. It annoys me that the other Calc teacher actually helps them during the test, the other Chem teacher doesn't even have a final (they're having a donut party), and the other History teacher retired early in the year, and they've have had a sub with worksheets ever since. </p>
<p>I suppose the actual question here is how do college's look at GPAs and how much do they matter if they're above a 4.0 (weighted).</p>
<p>Here's my schedule (junior year):
Band
AP Chem
AP World
AP Calc AB
AP Lang and Comp
Spanish III (no honors, and next year is AP)
AP Physics B</p>
<p>No matter what you tell yourself, it’s always possible to get an A in a class.</p>
<p>You should aim to stand out as a person, not as a set of numbers. One tough final will hardly make the difference in admittance. What you are experiencing is also a good preview of college. Professors will ask you questions from left field, try to make you stumble, and separate the boys from the men. And occasionally, but rarely, the professor will just be a straight up jerk. It is annoying, but doesn’t matter much in the long run. </p>
<p>In answer to your direct question, colleges aren’t much concerned with specific numbers, but more a range. GPAs are difficult for universities to compare because of variety in computation and inflation. The best way to describe the roll of numbers in the admissions process is that they get you on the table so to speak. Reasonable, but far from perfect numbers (exact values depending on the university) will show the admissions officers who is academically qualified to attend their institution. There will be many many students that fit this bill. They will next look towards your personality and achievements in high school to see how you fit into their profile for the freshman class and the campus community as a whole. You sound like you are putting a lot of pressure on yourself, and you are only a little more than halfway through high school. Relax! High school will go by faster than you can possibly imagine. Don’t make college admissions stand between you and enjoying those four years. If you can understand that, and put things in perspective, you will fair much better in the admissions process. I promise.</p>
<p>It’s all about rank. Colleges will compare you with others at your school. A 4.0 means completely different things at different schools.</p>
<p>Many universities do not consider class rank. This is because many high schools do not rank their classes. Other colleges simply don’t care.</p>