I’m wondering if the applications people care whether you got an 88% in math (which counts as an A at my school), or whether you got 93% in math, since it’s all 4.0 on the GPA scale. And everybody seems to be reporting GPAs, not their average percentage. So is there any use in worrying about the extra two or three percentage points if it’s all A’s in the end?
<p>I was wondering the same thing, since at my school, we stress if we get a 93 instead of a 95, but at a lot of schools it seems that it makes no difference. Adcoms must know that there are differences in the systems, but I doubt they hold it against anybody.</p>
<p>Schools like mine do not keep track of the actual percentage grade. They just say whether you got an A or a B. And on our transcripts that were sent to our colleges just had our letter grades.</p>
<p>Jerod</p>
<p>If the above is true, that is a pretty good way to deter frenetic grade-grubbing. On the other hand, it also runs the risk of punishing people who excel in one area (say, math) and achieve a 100% there, and only do average in something like say, English, where they achieve 83%. Their combined GPA for those two courses would be 3.5, as opposed to a person who did decent in both (88%), whose GPA would be 4.0 for those two classes.</p>
<p>Even on a 4.0 scale it can really vary between schools. At dd's school, only 4 boy's in the history of the school since the 1920's ever got 4.0 for all semesters. So it is very strange to see all the 4.0 kids on this board who do not go to as rigourous of schools grading-wise. It is very hard to get an A at this school.</p>
<p>...my school only does it by percentage, unweighted or weighted. we dont even mention much about 4.0 or anything like that, becuase i think that a 4.0 is so abstract in that some schools have a grading scale as high as 8.0...and others (like mine) only goes up to 4.0 (i think). i think that the percentage scale is alot more accurate and fair, becuase an A can be anywhere from a certain grade x to y...anything in between is still an A...its not fair that a student who gets a 99 get an A and someone who gets a 90 also gets an A...</p>