<p>I keep seeing people with unweighted GPAs at like 3.33, and then saying their weighted gpa is like 4.5. How is this possible? The way I was told to calculate weighted gpa was by adding 1 to every AP class and .5 to every Honors class. If this is how it is calculated, wouldn't it be impossible for weighted GPA to be more than 1 above unweighted GPA, assuming every class you took was an AP?</p>
<p>Different schools have different methods for weighting.</p>
<p>I believe at my daughter’s school a 4.0 becomes a 5.0 for IB classes. I’m not sure how she has a 4.1 UW though 
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<p>nice humblebrag NEPatsGirl. If different schools have different methods, isn’t posting your weighted gpa kind of unnecessary?</p>
<p>Wow, seems like most schools are very forgiving! At mine, you add .22225 (weird) for each honors or AP class. </p>
<p>LOL, At mine you add 0.00 for each Honors and AP class 
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<p>So how does one get over a 4.0 UW? That is really the question I should have asked. And just because one poster says different schools do it differently, doesn’t make it so (no offense skieurope, just making a point). If it makes you feel any better, she bombed the ACT.</p>
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Some schools calculate an A+ as a 4.3.</p>
<p>Thank you skieurope. I’m going to assume that is what is happening at our school. I thought maybe it was the rare cases that extra credit/points are available on an exam, so instead of getting 100% you get an added 5% for an optional essay for example.</p>
<p>At m kids high school only “core classes” were counted in the weighted GPA. 1.0 was added for honors. No APs were offered. A max of 4 honors available to any one student. (Honors typically required 2hours extra class time per week) </p>
<p>Unweighted GPA was all grades from all classes with out the honors bump. </p>
<p>Btw I think most of the smaller school are hip to the whole over inflated GPA scam. Both Ds had UW GPA higher than W GPA. See above. Bothe received merit awards based upon their hard earned less that 4.0 GPA. Many schools recalc your grades as reported and do not use the HS GPA. When I see a kid who braggs about 4.6 GPA I wonder what kind of education they actually received in high school. </p>
<p>It would seem that this is an area that is ripe for some kind of standardization. It doesn’t matter how one’s high school calculates it (except when using Naviance), it only matters how the colleges view it. Aren’t there some “converters” out there that could put the GPA on a more or less even playing field? It wouldn’t be perfect, but it would be close enough to allow some reasonable commonality. That way we wouldn’t have to try to interpret what a 5.5 out of 6 means… Maybe CC could add that to the home page, similar to how they have the AI calculator.</p>
<p>When my kids were applying i asked the GPA question. I was concerned that because their high school didnot offer APs nor rank, they’d be behind the curve. That’s when i learned that some colleges actually recalc the GPA according their own standards. Even the CA state system has a method for calculating GPA using only 10th and 11th grades without +/- and only for certain courses. Several of the top tier private don’t allow the extra Bump for more than two APs, although they do give “credit” for rigor. Fir example my Ds high school uw=3.8 w=3.6 uc=4.0</p>
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Even if u standardized the arithmetic calculation, it still doesn’t reflect that an A at Phillips Andover is harder earned than an A in some failing inner city public school.</p>
<p>We get a flat figure added to your final GPA for each weighted course. It generally works out to be approximately one extra grade for each AP or other college level course and no extra for honors courses. In general 5 APs that were all As along with a kid who never had anything other than an A in the rest of their classes would end up with just a shade under a 4.25 W and have a 4.0 UW. The highest kid ever at my oldest kids school had a 4.9W because of 19 APs. </p>
<p>This is EXACTLY why colleges look at unweighted GPAs vs. weighted. They want to know how hard your course choices are compared to your fellow students, but that is a separate question for the GC. Do NOT obsess about your weighted GPA. Colleges just chuck that number anyway; they either take your unweighted GPA, or recalculate an unweighted GPA (sometimes just keeping academic classes) themselves.</p>
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<p>True. But it would be an improvement from the current undefined free-for-all. And for a forum like College Search and Selection, posters could add some qualifiers about their school to provide some color to the GPA. </p>