Does anyone know how Yale views GPA? Do they recalculate it and if so, how?
No college I’m aware of, including Yale, publishes that specific kind of information.
Generally speaking – whether a college recalculates a GPA or not – Admissions Officers look at 5 basic academic categories: English, Math, Social Studies (History), Science, and Foreign Language. They tend to ignore non-academic classes such as Gym, Music, Dance, Theater, and Health.
What about a Science Research class that meets 3 periods a week and is taken for three years and requires two summer lab commitments? My high school considers it equally with the five subject areas you mentioned above. Do you think Yale will?
You’re asking impossible questions. Your school will submit a summary of courses available. Hopefully, it’ll describe the unusual weighting this research class possesses. Will colleges take note? Who knows. You cant do anything about it anyway
College admissions officers are generally assigned specific regions. Part of their job is to become familiar with the high schools in their regions and be able to speak to the rigor of the programs in those schools. Assuming your school has enough applicants to Yale that it is known to the admissions officer, then you can be pretty sure that the officer will know what the differences are between “regular” and advanced classes at that school. If your school has few or no applicants then the admissions officer might not be as aware of the finer distinctions of the classes in your school.
^^ In addition, every high school sends a “High School Profile” to colleges that details in words and graphs the grading system at their school, the number of AP courses offered, the range of GPA’s at their school, the range of SAT-ACT scores at their school and other specific programs offered at the high school. In this way a college that is not familiar with a high school and their offerings can quickly get up to speed. Many high school’s make their profile’s available to college’s on-line. Here are two examples of high school profiles. Imagine you are evaluating a student from each school with an unweighted 3.9 GPA. Can you figure out where that student is in the pecking order at their school? If you can do it, I imagine an Admissions Officer can do it faster:
Boston Latin High School Profile: http://www.bls.org/ourpages/auto/2013/5/24/55204166/2015-16%20BLS%20Profile.pdf
Stuyvesant High School Profile: http://stuy.enschool.org/ourpages/auto/2013/3/7/37096823/Class%20of%202016%20profile%20PDF.pdf
This was asked at the admissions information session we attended when D applied, and their response was that yes they recalculate GPA, and they use it as a way to compare students who come from very different schools. Their extensive review of each high school profile is used as they recognize that, for example, a 90 is an A in some schools and an A- at others. Many high schools will provide a weighted GPA to recognize the fact that AP or honors level courses are more challenging than level one courses. But generally speaking, the student does not have control over which or how many AP courses are offered at their high school, so the idea is that students should not be penalized for this. Nor should the student be penalized if they get an 5 A’s and an A- in a but their school does not weight honors nor AP classes, while other schools do.
The inquiring potential applicant wanted to know if her A+ in AP Calc would be weighted more than her A+ in AP Stats or her A+ in level one Freshman World History. I recall being very impressed by the admin official who said to relax, they are all very impressive, but the whole idea of weighting is to compare someone who has had straight A’s in all basic level courses - at a school that does not offer A+'s, with someone who has A+'s in mostly AP courses. The idea is that they are trying to make sure the accepted students will be put in a position to succeed. And while grades and course selection are very important, there are a lot of other factors they look at when they are trying to put together their class. She said “The best way to help your chances is to take challenging courses and then to do very well at them”.
Then she said “There is nothing anyone can do to guarantee admission here as virtually all of our serious applicants are extremely capable, talented, hardworking young people” Then one dad chirped in “Unless you can convince your parents to donate a billion dollars or so”, which drew laughter from the audience, and the admin official replied “I think we may need to talk separately” to more laughs.
My D was accepted to Yale, but she chose Stanford.
Thank you all for the helpful information.