I’m wondering what GPA scale is most commonly used for weighted GPA. Which one your school uses and what was the GPA of current or previous year’s Valedictorian? I’m guessing most districts use a 5.0 with 4.0 for regular, 4.5 for honors and 5.0 for AP/IB courses. Some schools give full points to ones scoring above 97 while others give it to 95+.
This can be confusing as I was talking to some parents in my kid’s summer camp and they thought that 4.6 is a very low weighted GPA. It turned out that their school uses a 10.0 scale, one with 4.6 had a 5.0 scale in their school so it was a very good GPA.
At our school, vals have a 4.0 uw and only need to have taken 1 AP/IB class.
Really? That’s strange, never heard of a Val in our area with just one AP.
That is the minimum requirement, the kids who actually make it probably have more, but idk.
At my school:
4.0 for an A in a regular class (and one point lower for a B, C, etc)
5.0 for an A in an honors class
6.0 for an A in an AP class
The valedictorian had a 5.2 at my school.
Ours just adds 0.08 for ap, IB and dual enrollment and 0.04 for honors to the unweighted gpa. Our val had a gpa of 10.03
My HS weighted no courses and had no valedictorian. The highest GPA in my class was somewhere around a 3.97.
All of our honors and AP classes are add .5 to the weighted GPA, expect Honors Bio, which gives .25 since it would be unfair if it gave the same weight as AP Bio. So, when accounting for a few required standard classes the highest weighted GPA one could get is a little below 4.5. Our unweighted GPA isn’t reported, but I guess the highest possible would be 4.0.
My kids’ school counted AP and honors the same, 5 points. I think the Val is usually around 4.6.
So basically it varies from 4-11. Wow!!!
No wonder top colleges focus on unweighted GPA.
Yup, weighted GPA policies are all across the board, which is why most colleges use UW GPA for admissions purposes or apply their own scale.
No weighting of any class for ranking here. All classes count towards rank, even PE. Grading is out of 100, val is typically 99.x.
Our school weights, but only for ranking purposes. Weighted grades do not appear on the report card or transcript. We have grades on a 100 scale, and honors, dual enrollment and AP classes are weighted at either 5% or 10% depending on the class. You never see weighted grades, nor do colleges, it is just a computation for ranking that is announced at the beginning of Sr. year, and then finalized after 1st semester Sr. year.
I think the percentage weighting makes a lot more sense than the +.5 or +1 that other schools on a 4.0 system use. If you get a C in an AP class, why do you get the same weighing bonus as someone that gets an A?
In the past several years the weighted gpas of Vals have ranged 100-103 if I remember correctly.
My school ranked by unweighted GPA, and the valedictorian had a 4.0. I think the top three students had a 4.0, so they must have broken the tie by looking at who had taken more honors classes. The valedictorian’s initials were AA and she would also have been ranked first if the whole thing were done by alphabetical order. 
my school just started doing weighted GPAs so until like the class of 2020 or something Val will still be determined by unweighted GPA (even though class rank is now determined by weighted). Everyone who has a 4.0 gets val, and there’s usually like 10 of them.
School uses UW GPA on a 4.0 scale. “Valedictorians” are based on 9-11+1st sem 12 grades. In a class of usually 600, there are usually 30 or so valedictorians by the end of eligible period (all of which have 4.0s).
No weighting, no ranking, no val, no AP/IB courses, but some courses are defined as “most rigorous.” One or two students every year graduate with a 4.0/4.0.
UW on 4.0 scale; W is 5.0 scale. AP/IB are weighted equally in the weighted scale.