GPA Rounding

<p>and what if you don’t have the transcript?</p>

<p>^^^Wouldn’t it also show up on a report card? My D’s report cards always showed GPA. Or you can call the adviser’s office.</p>

<p>How many digits does the common app allow for when reporting gpa? My son’s school reports gpa (on 100 scale) out to four decimal places. Is there that much room for that many digits on the common app?</p>

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And of course other kinds of lying never happen!</p>

<p>reeinaz,</p>

<p>You should be able to get a transcript.</p>

<p>I’m sure I could if I requested it. But my point was that not everyone will have a copy of the transcript to know exactly how the gpa is reported on it. Even the gpa on the report card might be different than what’s on the transcript.</p>

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<p>Too funny… which just proves how dang funny these threads get…you can eyeball that one and either put down 3.7 or put down3.67 or 3.66 which every floats your boat and for the truly anal…3.6666666666 etc. And if someone really thinks college admittance decisions are being made on one one thousandth or people are being rejected for rounding 3.67 to 3.7 I’ve got some you know what to sell you. No wonder so many kids are stressed out. Many of the colleges are recalculating and giving it there own GPA (generally in “their reporting favor”) anyway, the “Mac-sizing” of GPAs. I just tell the kids give any A a 4, any B a 3, and divide by the total number of classes and check the unweighted box… pretty dang simple and probably pretty darn close to what would be on their transcript for the unweighted GPA.</p>

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<p>While I agree that one should report it exactly as it appears on the transcript, what if the high school rounds to nearest (giving 3.667) or does not show a GPA at all?</p>

<p>There is a difference between 3.66 and 3.67. Get real here people.</p>

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<p>Truncate the last xxx digits, (which may result in rounding down).</p>

<p>Why? Who ever said that’s the way to do it? Is this new math that college admission has come up with? It is not what people do in the real world. I don’t think any high school is going to calculate GPA differently for each college - oh, this college wants to truncate, this college wants to round up, this college wants to see 2 decimal pts, this college wants to see 1.</p>

<p>I would be very curious what the Dean of CC (Sally Rubenstone) would say about this. I hope she is reading. </p>

<p>It never even occurred to me that how the hundredths or thousandths place is reported would make a huge difference or would constitute “lying”. Do admissions offices really have time to catch people rounding instead of truncating if they get thousands or tens of thousands of applications? It seems crazy to ding a person for a discrepancy of <1%, especially since different high schools have different grading standards in the first place.</p>

<p>Safest thing to do is to report exactly as your school reports the GPA. That’s easy enough to find out. But if I were considered a liar by an adcom for rounding up in the standard way most of us learned in 6th grade (which, by the way, my kid’s school did, at three decimal points, IIRC), I wouldn’t want to go to the school in question.</p>

<p>Seriously? Colleges are worried about “lying” about a GPA by calling a 3.666 a 3.67 and not a 3.66? That’s not a nitpicky college I’d ever want to attend then.</p>

<p>while this doesn’t refer to college apps by high schoolers, Penn Career Services states their position clearly for use of their programs:</p>

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<p>[Resume</a> Writing, Career Services, University of Pennsylvania](<a href=“http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/undergrad/resumes.html]Resume”>http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/undergrad/resumes.html)</p>

<p>And from BU:</p>

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<p><a href=“http://smg.bu.edu/upo/docs/Guidelines-IncludingGPAonResumes.pdf[/url]”>http://smg.bu.edu/upo/docs/Guidelines-IncludingGPAonResumes.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>^^^exactly. BU is asking for 2 decimal points, so it would not be correct to round it to 3.5. Again, no one could be bothered to report GPA differently for each college. They just need to get a grip.</p>

<p>Just to point out, the link bluebayou provided for Penn is for resume writing, not for college applciation, AND it said that it needs to be listed with 2 decimal places, NOT rounded to ONE decimal place. It doesn’t say to truncate or round down. Another word, if your GPA is 3.666, it is ok to list 3.67, but not ok to list 3.7.</p>

<p>The OP is asking about the common app. GPAs bounce around…every college is either going to actually look at your transcript or validate your common app info from the transcripts …me thinks in typical CC fashion we’re making a mountain out of a molehill if we’re talking about the difference in 3.66 and 3.67 and 3.7 for an unweighted GPA on a 4 pt. scale.</p>

<p>FYI - as someone who reads a lot of resumes, I don’t really care if someone’s GPA is 3.67 or 3.7.</p>

<p>I hate the official transcripts my school issues, which rounds to 1 decimal place. It rounds like the rounding rules I learned in 4th grade, though, so I can’t complain that much.</p>

<p>What’s on my official transcript (A+ worth 4.3): 3.7
Rounded to 2 decimal places, A+ worth 4.3: 3.67
Rounded to 2 decimal places, A+ worth 4: 3.61</p>

<p>oldfort—in our DS’s case, that rounding could mean the difference of about $5000/year at some schools, the 3.7 gets him one award but if rounded to 3.8 it gets him another. In the employment world, not, it wouldn’t make a difference at all.</p>