Things have changed so much since I was in high school. I’m wondering if this is normal or unusual.
My child’s HS only gives letter grades. No pluses, no minuses, just A/B/C/D/F. They are weighed for academic (4.0 scale), honors (4.5 scale) and AP (5.0 scale), but that is it.
So, is it normal to not have +/- built into a GPA? It just seems so strange to me to have a class with an 81 and a class with an 89 both count as a B/3.0.
Every school has it’s own grading scale. Many don’t use +/-. With your child’s transcript will go the HS grading scale so colleges will take the GPA in context.
It is common for high school GPAs to be calculated on letter grades without using +/-. Note that some colleges recalculate high school GPAs of applicants to make them more comparable, although others take the high school GPAs at face value (which can be advantageous if exaggerated weighting is used for weighted GPAs).
Your HS will send a school profile which (among other things) will describe the grading scale so the transcript will be reviewed in the proper context.