Hi all,
I have a question about how college admission officers, especially at private colleges, evaluate high school senior’s GPA. For example, if a student has a GPA of 4.2 from their own high school, and they also took two classes at a local community college and got As, how will the college AO evaluate their GPA? Will they recalculate the GPA factoring in the college courses?
Thanks in advance for your response.
Each college may have its own method of evaluating a mix of high school and college courses for a frosh applicant who took college courses while in high school.
Most do not post their methods. A few, like California public universities, do post them.
@ucbalumnus is correct, that each school may have a different methodology.
I wouldn’t think of them as recalculating the GPA as much as I would as only considering relevant classes, especially at more academically competitive schools. So an admissions officer may look at the classes (not GPA) and recalculate it only using core courses. If a GPA is plumped up by electives, for instance, it’s going to look weaker when an AO looks at the details.
“Core” courses may differ by college (e.g. is art or music “core”?).
How electives are viewed depends on what they are. Rigorous academic electives are more likely to be viewed favorably unless they displace expected base courses (e.g. if the student skips physics, foreign language level 3, and precalculus to take AP environmental science, AP human geography, and AP statistics, that may not look so good).
Good points! Thanks both for your reply.
Thanks for the info.