I wonder student’s GPA calculation.
Each schools have different gpa system.
Just wonder. Very smart students get 4. 7 and 4.8 in gpa ( i see rarely over 5.0 in posts)
Example ( our school gives 5.0 in honor and ap classes and add 0.2 so 5 honor or 5 ap will be 5.0 . If 4 aps or honors with regular PE or foreign language will be 4.8 . So keeping 5.0 , students should take 5 aps or honors classes. If they take 6 ap classes in junior year, their gpa will be increased 0.03 so 5. 06 by junior with all As. Honor or AP : A 5.0 B 4.0 C 3.0
If anyone has different calculation?
Basically, any weighted HS GPA gives little or no information unless you know the weighting method, which varies from one school to another (or from one college to another for those colleges that recalculate HS GPA for frosh admission purposes).
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SC and a few states go to 6.0 weighted but our transcripts also have the 4.0 unweighted.
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Ours as well as some other private schools in the area use :
-Honors and AP both get 0.5 bump. Nothing gets 1.0 bump.
-A+does get a 0.3 bump, or similar, in most schools, but at least in ours A+is rare in the vast majority of classes.
-only 3-4 honors are available in 9th or 10th, for anyone, and 4 is rare.
-AP : one in 10th for only the top 1/3rd, most have none; 3-4 AP in 11&12 is common, over 10 APs total is less than 5% of the class, but honors in every class not AP for 11&12 is common. So about 1/3 or more of the class has a “bump” on practically every class for 11&12, yet only a small group take the hardest options available(less than 5% per year really max it out). The result is a top-20% GPA around 4.2W can be vastly different course rigor. For the kids who stay in mostly regular, many of them have a “3.97-4.0 uw”–all grades in some sort of A range, just mostly regular, so their Weighted is also 4.0.
The “common” quoted method on CC is honors=0.5 bump and AP=1.0 bump, and in many schools it seems honors/AP are available for most classes all 4 yrs, so it makes it very difficult to assess a poster who is “4.4 W”–that could be near middle of the class at some schools or top handful of kids at ours.
IF I recalculate my D’s Weighted GPA by the common CC method (and allowing the 0.3 for A+), its around 5.1 , whereas her official school W is about half a point lower.
Bottom line, HS GPAs just aren’t easy to compare which is why AOs/colleges have to look at the transcript(courses taken, grades received) vs what is offered at the HS to figure this all out.
Every high school around here calculates GPA and weighted GPA a different way. There is nothing you can do about that.
Some colleges actually recalculate GPA using their own method. Most colleges will review your application in the context of what your HS does.
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Every school is different. Our school uses what is probably the most common weighting system in MA - +.5 for honors and +1 for AP. At our school, and many other MA schools, AP classes aren’t available until junior year so kids here have somewhat lower (relative) gpa’s than others. I think the top gpa you could get at our school - all A’s taking the maximum allowable APs (4 per year) - would be around a 4.7. In any case, colleges evaluate GPA within the context of your school so I wouldn’t waste any time worrying about it. Some schools recalculate gpa’s using their own methodology anyway.
Schools will send the transcript, plus an overview of their grading system, and often an explanation of what percentage of the class has GPAs in what range, and maybe a class rank, although more and more schools are dropping that. Some schools don’t give any higher GPA weight for honors and AP. Some schools add a quarter point, a half point, a whole point. Some scales go up to 6.0. Some schools simply score out of 100, and some add points even to that scale for AP and honors. But believe me, every high school will send something that explains their grading system, and in what percentile of the class a student’s GPA puts them. Not to mention that some colleges simply recalculate the applicant’s GPA based upon their own rating system.
Don’t worry about it. The colleges will know how to view a student’s GPA. Focus your efforts on other aspects of the application process.
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However, it does seem that posters on these forums usually take weighted HS GPA at face value (for the purpose of suggesting colleges and estimating chances of admission) when someone posts only a weighted HS GPA with no description of the weighting. This can result in college suggestions and chance estimates that are significantly off of the realistic ones.
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In terms of recommending colleges, it’s more helpful if you have UW gpa in addition to W gpa plus some information about rigor. In any case, “chancing” is a difficult exercise – unless you can read LORs, read someone’s essay and know something about what type of HS they go to, it is almost impossible to chance someone - not to mention, one never knows what type of institutional priorities are in play at a given school in a given year.