<p>Help! When I look at college websites or use college search tools (like Counselor-o-matic at Princeton Review), when they refer to a student's GPA do they mean a regular GPA or a weighted GPA? </p>
<p>For instance, my son has taken mostly honors classes. He usually gets B+ in his honors classes, and A's in his non-honors classes. His guidance counselor told me that I should use an A = 4.0 system and add .5 to his grades in honors classes to generate his weighted GPA, and use that when looking to see if a college is a good fit for him. His unweighted GPA is 3.5, but his weighted GPA is 3.9. So if I'm looking at a college website and it says the average GPA is 3.7, how does that compare to my son? Should I be using the 3.5 figure, or the 3.9??</p>
<p>(For ranking purposes our HS uses a system where an A in a regular class is 12 points, an A in an honors class is 15 points, and A in an AP class is 16.5 points. Using that system his GPA is 12.8).</p>
<p>I've given up trying to come up with a general rule, but would be happy to hear otherwise. It seems like this one particular item can be so idiosyncratic that talking to the Admissions Office is the only way to get an answer. I've seen a few college websites with detailed discussion on this, but not many.</p>
<p>When I view college websites that provide an avg. GPA, I go by that it is an UNweighted GPA. Then, of course, selective schools want to see that the student took the most challenging curriculum available and so please note that that does count. But as far as GPA comparison purposes or statistics, usually the school's avg. GPA is an unweighted one. Afterall, not all high schools have weighted grades....like ours did not. So, unweighted GPA is something all students have. Again, schools will look at each individual's strength of courseload and things like rank, etc. If I were you, I would use the unweighted GPA when looking at published college statistics. Then I would read further to see if a specific school talks about difficulty of high school curriculum and/or note that the most selective schools will expect a challenging courseload.
Susan</p>