<p>^ And what if they don’t use a 4.0 scale? What if they don’t know that that’s the “standard” because that’s not what they’re use to? </p>
<p>And, actually, I’d bet my bottom dollar that the vast majority of admissions don’t recalculate GPA so it’s a moot point. </p>
<p>Calculating an average should not be hard. I agree that the problem is not the actual math, it’s understanding what point system and methodology is being employed. Which classes are included in the GPA colleges want reported and which ones are not? Many colleges say they re-calculate GPA for admissions purpose, but how exactly do they do it? Suppose they say that they do not include electives when they re-calculate–only core classes. So no home ec. But what if your elective is a math, science, or social studies class, as in you’re taking two classes in one core subject? Then should it be included in the calculation? How are the plusses and minuses handled? If your high school does not give A+'s (just C+ and B+) but you know other schools do; should you give one to yourself if you have a 99 average in the class and an 89 at your school would be a B+? Then there’s the problem of varying numbers of credits. For our school’s GPA purposes, AP lab classes that meet two periods but give one grade have that grade counted twice. Should you count it twice when you re-calculate? And be careful about classes like health that meets one quarter out of the year and gym which meets 3 quarters. Our school couldn’t get that right. I remember S’s GPA was wrong until we pointed out the error because they had accidentally counted health as a full year class, so his A turned out to be the mathematical equivalent of an F, since it was as if he had gotten a 25%/100%. </p>
<p>Standard scale: 4.0 = A, 3.7 = A-, 3.3 = B+, 3.0 = B, and so on, down to 1.7 C-, then 1.0 D and 0.0 F.</p>
<p>Most HS’s include everything that gets a letter grade. </p>
<p>Some universities go further, and calculate an academic GPA grade.</p>
<p>It would be nice to know which is which, because the latter will hurt my son as he has honors band and does well in it.</p>
<p>Just to be annoying, my son’s HS gives every student a 0.3 boost for unweighted GPA, so that a student taking all regular classes has the potential of 4.3 points as a GPA. Yet a student who was theoretically taking all honors/AP courses would have a theoretical maximum of 5.0 (only a 0.7 boost for honors/AP - some schools give 1.0 points for honors and 2.0 points for AP), but in reality, there are only so many AP classes, so maybe 8 AP classes and 3 honors classes possible, out of 28 courses. Therefore, it is beneficial to stay in regular classes for GPA purposes, but top schools do consider rigor strongly.</p>
<p>Our school can’t even do it internally consistently. Our scale is 12 = A+. Weighted classes x 1.25. That is computerized and seems to work ok (after a few years of tweaks…)</p>
<p>For scholarships and college apps that require a 4.0 scale, the secretary hand calculates the math, and gives no fractions for + or -, even though the handbook specifically states we do and the 12 point scales does. I think this penalizes the top kids, since they are more likely to have A+ than A-, B+ than B-, etc.</p>
<p>I am hopeful adcoms review the transcript and rank and give them more weight than the GPA, since its calculation varies so much by school.</p>
<p>I know how to calculate an average. Our school’s weighting system was pretty clear. They also said “only academic courses” were counted when calculated the GPA. I calculated my kids GPA many different ways using an Excel spreadsheet and still couldn’t figure out exactly which courses were included in my son’s GPA. I never worried to much about it. His rank was in the top 6% and it was pretty clear they included more courses as “academic” than I would have. Luckily those were all courses he’d done very well in.</p>
<p>@pizzagirl I don’t think our school puts the GPA on report cards, just the transcript which never gets sent home unless you ask, so going and trying to back calculate something that is not even there, well, why bother?</p>
<p>Our HS put the weight table in student handbook. AP and IB were weighted heavier than CP but it is completely by the actual numerical grade. So a 93 (A) is 5.0 in AP but 95 is 5.4 (or something, don’t have scale with me) so you have to use the table for each class. But it is uniform in all HS in the state.</p>
<p>But I still don’t understand what difference it makes to a college how classes are weighted. If you have all As you have a 4 pt., if you have mostly As and a few Bs it’s probably around a 3.7. What difference does it make how an individual high school weights classes for the purposes of THAT school? If you know the scale of what constitutes an A, B, C which would theoretically be int he profile you can look at just about any transcript and mentally calculate a GPA. The only difference I have seen are high school that award As for 90 and schools that don’t award As for a 90 (92 or 93 needed for the A). </p>
<p>For the purpose of scholarship applications, for one thing. If you are trying to decide whether or not to apply to a school and can only attend if you are awarded an automatic merit scholarship that has a strict GPA minimum, I think it might matter to get a very exact calculation. If it were me, I’d call the schools in question to find out how they calculate GPA. Our schools use straight 4/3/2/1, no +/- and no weighting, so this is not a problem for us, but I have puzzled over how this might affect others. Do schools remove the +/- and recalculate GPA when that is used? Or maybe only remove the + from A+'s?. What about systems that use numerical grades? Do schools recalculate the grade for each class, and if so, do they use +/-? Or do they just convert your overall numerical average directly to a GPA if there isn’t any weighting in the grade?</p>
<p>^^ But it’s still going to be the college awarding the scholarship that determines whether the student will qualify or not. and it is the college that decides if they use unweighted or weighted GPAs. I agree, just ask. If you have a school that does not weight, and the uni gives scholarships that are based on weighted, ask the college to weight the GPA. That happened to both S2 and S1 with us at public unis and they were happy to base the scholarship on a weighted GPA even though their transcript was unweighted. </p>
<p>Celesteroberts, are you suggesting that colleges might just send a transcript where the GPA says for instance 89.5 or simply report the numbers? or are you referring to high schools that use numbers in a different way? </p>
<p>My kids’ high school uses a 100 scale, unweighted, and that’s what they put on the transcript. So to translate my son’s 92.8 into 4.0 GPA (do I round up?) I have a choice of any number of conversion tables on line, ranging from the Princeton Review, in which a 93 is a 3.7–and your example, Momofthreeboys, assumed that a 3.7 includes a few Bs, which this 92.8, at any rate, doesn’t; College Board, in which it is a 4.0; wikihow, which says it is a 3.65; and there’s other sites that would yield a 3.8, another 4.0, and another 4.0. I do not blame kids who are confused, and who don’t want to be seen as inflating their scores if they report wrongly. </p>
<p>I don’t care to do it either, lazy perhaps. But my daughter’s high schools did it so I don’t have to. But I wouldn’t do for any poster on CC. Common, these kids are young enough to write an app about it and they can call it an EC. What’s in it for me?:D</p>
<p>OK, for those of you who think this isn’t about math skills, just ignorance of how GPA is calculated, consider this question.</p>
<p>“At a school, grade point averages are calculated by making an A worth 4 points,
a B worth 3, etc., and all courses are equally weighted. After 20 courses, Zach
has a grade point average of exactly 3.9. If he can get As in all of his future
classes, how many more classes must Zach take to raise his average to exactly
3.95?”</p>
<p>This question appeared in the 2014 Mathcounts state competition (for those of you who aren’t into math competitions, that’s a middle school competition). It was asked of the very top competitors at the state level. These are some of the best of the best in the entire country at doing mental math quickly. And they are impressively good. These kids blow me away. Yet, I watched with disbelief as these kids stared in silence at this problem and were unable to answer it. Is it any wonder that the more typical high school students post on here, how can I raise my GPA? They can’t figure it out. Something is missing in our elementary/middle school education.</p>
<p>They should have asked how many courses with As to get it up to a 4.0</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>GPA will help the student tell which colleges are realistic to get admitted to. A student with an unweighted 4.0 HS GPA is likely to have a lot more choices of colleges, and hence a much better chance of being able to enroll at the perfect fit college, than a student with an unweighted 2.3 HS GPA.</p>
<p>I found where my son’s high school puts the GPA! On Naviance! Both weighted and unweighted.</p>
<p>Mathyone - that’s insanely easy. It takes ten seconds to write the relevant equation and another ten to do the math to get the answer. I agree it’s ridiculous. </p>
<p>“Honestly, I think there’s a classist undertone to this thread. The assumption that students should just KNOW about this mythical standard scale to use to calculate their UW GPA is elitist IMO. Think about students who don’t really know about other grading scales. Why should they? They’ve had the ones the schools have used and why should they think that there are different ones in different school districts? Think about those whose parents didn’t go to college.”</p>
<p>They should be able to calculate their OWN GPA with their OWN grades in their OWN school system. </p>
<p>Yes, agree. I don’t think it’s a classist undertone, I just think it’s giving false importance to all the different scales. Students should unpack their own transcript and understand how it will be viewed.</p>
<p>Re#32 - I can’t believe those kids couldn’t do that average in their head. No need to spend any seconds setting up equations. </p>
<p>My experience watching the top ten NYS Mathcounts finalists when my oldest was in Middle school was that those kids had the answers before I’d even finished reading the questions. It was scary how quick they were.</p>