<p>mom2collegekids: His school gives out letter grades like most other schools, but it doesn’t compute a GPA. We had to compute the GPA myself (and cross checked with school). School sends out transcripts without gpa and without class rank. It also doesn’t identify any classes as AP or Hons, although many classes qualify for these criteria (based on how tough the classes are, size of the classes, and the AP based syllabus). In other words, the school expects colleges to learn about the school and consider their students’ record on that basis. That works out well at some schools, but I don’t think most large public universities care to do the necessary work to know a specific high school. So my son is at a disadvantage when schools have minimum gpa requirements (unofficial, of course).</p>
<p>Also, when I said weighted GPA, it is only weighting for difference in number of credits. I understand others use higher weight for an AP or a hons course (e.g. if Statistics is a 1.0 course credit at my son’s high school, a public school offering the same course would call it AP Statistics and the weighted might be 1.1 for that course), but since the school doesn’t identify any of the courses as Ap or hons, even the AP courses (based on the syllabus/text used and the AP tests taken) look like plain courses. It is frustrating – feels like my son is taking a knife to a gun fight because the school confiscated his gun and sent him off with a knife for the fight.</p>