<p>How do top level colleges (Harvard,etc.) calculate your unweighted GPA? Do A-s bring down your GPA? At my high school, they do, but I think I read somewhere on this forum that A-s can't hurt. Does admissions actually use GPA to compare applicants, or do they only look at class ranks? Anyways, good luck to everyone on all your college applications.</p>
<p>do you mean A's when compared to A+'s? if so, then no, it won't hurt... an A is an A, period.. so a 90 and a 100 will both give you a 4.0 GPA (at least from what i've heard)</p>
<p>No I meant (A-)s (90-93%) and As (93+), but you basically answered my question. Does it help to have a 4.0 if you are already #1 at your hs?</p>
<p>if you're already #1 at your high school but you don't have a 4.0, then that shows something about your course rigor... so no, if you're #1, you're doing great</p>
<p>btw my school does the same thing (3.7 GPA for 90-92 and a 93+ is a 4.0)</p>
<p>yeah the same thing at my school...A- (90-93) = 3.66<br>
A (93-100) = 4.00</p>
<p>Ok thanks. Good Luck with your college admissions. (If, your not in college yet)</p>
<p>i dont believe that what your official highschool gpa is looked at. Most colleges recalculate their own gpa's for each student. That way, they can easily compare students who come from highschools using all different methods of grading (weighted vs. unweighted; 4.0 vs 100 etc.). My highschool doesnt even do class ranking because the students are too competitive already. They also grade out of 98 and dont weight grades. so the gpa that was on my transcript was a 96.9/98, but harvard probably wont look at it, since they recalculate their own to assign to each student.</p>
<p>I know they do, hence the question: how do they calculate your GPA. I am pretty sure they calculate practically the same way for every HS that uses a 4.0 scale. I think they take off weights from Honors/AP classes and also count 90-100 as an A. I might be wrong, feel free to reply back. Anyways, this was a stupid question to begin with since class rank/class size is the more important aspect in a transcript. As for schools, like yours, which don't report class ranks, it could either be a setback or a bonus. For example, your valedictorian/sal. would look worse on paper if your HS only reports the fact they're in the top 5% or 10% of the senior class. But if your on the edge of the threshold, then it would surely help. Anyways good luck to you and the rest, I know i will need a good amount of it with my weak scores. (and yes, my scores are truly weak; I am not one of those people that start a post worrying about their 2300s or 2200s)</p>
<p>I go to a catholic school, and we are required to take religion courses every year. Does a college throw this out when calculating GPA?</p>
<p>I do too; no I think religion classes are counted :-) , but if you think about it, religion classes take up class space for other potential AP/Honors courses :-(. Personally, I wish I could have replaced those courses with more APs but everyone has to take religion. So GPA wise, religion will help you (thats if your schools religion courses were as easy as they were at mine :). But I think that Harvard looks down upon Catholic schools since they waste valuable class space on religion. But who knows, maybe it helps overall since Catholic school apps are less common and therefore more diverse.</p>