In my school an A- is a grade between 90-93%. How bad do these look on high school transcripts? I have a couple A- grades in my junior year and I’m wondering how much it will hurt.
If you are looking to get A’s, an A- is lower than that. I think it depends on where you plan to apply and why.
Do you think a transcript full of A- grades would hurt significantly for top schools like Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, etc?
You need to look at in context of the other aspects of the application. However, if by “full of A- grades” that the overall GPA is around 3.7, then yes, that will hurt.
If your school is like most, colleges actually won’t even see +/-. Only the letter.
Furthermore, if an A is worth the same as an A- for your school’s GPA calculation, it won’t affect you whatsoever.
I didn’t know that. I thought colleges can see the difference between an A and an A- . I’ll have to check with my school to see if they show that on our transcripts
For what it’s worth, at my high school colleges can see the difference between an A- and an A and an A+. Yours is probably the same. I think that’s way more common than for only the letter grade to appear, which happens a lot more in college (though obviously not all colleges).
If colleges are recalculating your GPA, it shouldn’t matter what kind of A you have, but if you want to apply to a competitive school, the higher the grade the better.
However, you should also consider your weighted average, as well as the average grade of your class. Most colleges should have a good idea through class rank and average GPA of where you stand in the context of your grade/school, but you should try to find out for yourself in case you need to improve.
A few A- probably aren’t going to hurt you anywhere, but it also depends on the context of your school. If 15 kids in your class have a 4.0 your A- grades don’t look so good. At my kid’s school, someone gets a 4.0 about once a decade and colleges realize this.