<p>I'm a freshmen in high school right now and it's my goal to be valedictorian when I graduate. I'm currently taking an AP class as one of my courses (Human Geography) and I was just wondering what kind of grades are necessary to get a 5.0 gpa. I understand you need straight A-s, but specifically, what's the percentage? Like do you need straight 100's or would straight 90's add up to the same number?</p>
<p>Remember that a GPA without context means nothing. Every high school weights differently, and some don’t weight at all. For college admissions purposes, you should be most concerned with your unweighted GPA on a 4.0 scale.</p>
<p>I’ll assume you’re working with the following scale:</p>
<p>Unweighted class: A = 4.0, B = 3.0, C = 2.0, D = 1.0, F = 0
Weighted class: A = 5.0, B = 4.0, etc.</p>
<p>By this scale, a true A in a weighted class should count as a 5.0 regardless of the percentage. If it counts as something less than that, it wasn’t an A. </p>
<p>A 90 is generally not considered an A in high school. It’s an A- or a B, which means you wouldn’t end up with a 5.0 if you got straight 90s. </p>
<p>But there’s generally no difference between straight 95s and straight 100s if those are both considered As. </p>
<p>Also, at most high schools it’s not actually possible to get a 5.0 GPA because you can’t take all weighted classes. So you’ll also want to consider what the highest possible weighted GPA is.</p>
<p>It depends on the school a lot. Sometimes a 90 is an A, sometimes it is not. Sometimes an A- counts for as much towards your GPA as an A, sometimes it does not. Sometimes honors classes are weighted, sometimes they are not.</p>
<p>At my school, the only weighted class are AP and IB. That means to get a 5.0, you’d have to take all AP/IB classes, which is impossible to do because of graduation requirements in general ed classes. To give you an idea of ballpark numbers on this sort of scale, I’m the salutatorian with a GPA of ~4.44.</p>
<p>@evanatch Do colleges look at your GPA based on the school’s scale or collegeboard’s scale? My school says that a 90-100 is an A/4.0, but collegeboard says it’s 93+.</p>
<p>My school doesn’t actually include percentages on our transcript. I imagine they go by the school’s grading scale.</p>
<p>I have no idea. My school’s scale is the same as yours it sounds like, but percentages are not reported on transcripts. I would guess it varies from college to college which scale they use.</p>
<p>As everyone else says, we need to know you schools grading scale. Firstly, you need to be convicted to doing well. Secondly, don’t study so much if you have tons of homework. It doesn’t work out so well.Study on the weekends; when you have the most time.</p>
<p>At my school, a 90 is an A- which translates into a 3.65, while a 97+ is an A+ which translates into a 4.0 (or a 5.0 in your case.) In order to maintain a perfect weighted GPA, you need to do somewhat well in all of your classes, especially AP classes - our Val wasn’t a straight A student but had over a 4.0 because of AP classes. However, a perfect unweighted GPA can only be attained through straight A+'s in every quarter, every year (or very, very close to it, as the system might round to a 4.0 if you had say, a 3.999999)</p>
<p>Colleges will see what is reported by your school on your transcript, whether that is percentages or letter grades. They will also have a school profile which will tell them what those grades mean. At our local HS, an A+ in an “academic” level class gets you a 4.0 and an A get 3.8; honors adds .4 points, AP adds another .4 for a maximum of 4.8 quality points for a given class.</p>
<p>But nobody can get a 4.8 GPA. As a freshman, you could talk AP History, Honors Math, Science, and English. You electives are generally going to be academic, and foreign languages start as academic until 3rd year. Some of our freshmen now take French or Spanish 3, so they could have an additional honors class. Assuming you take 6.5 credits (the minimum allowed, including .5 credit phys ed) with 4 honors and one AP, you could end up with max 4.369 at the end of freshman year. Later years you could take more AP classes, but your electives will usually still be academic, and throw in our health class which is even “lower” level with max of 3.6 for an A+. Remember also that a student who loads up on extra academic classes instead of traditional electives is likely to look less well-rounded.</p>