I currently go to a preparatory high school that has a +/- system. Honors classes give a 3 pt curve and ap classes give a 5 pt curve. For example, an a+ in an honors class is a 93.5+, a = 89.5+ and a- 86.5; ap is just the same thing 5 instead of 3 as mentioned earlier. So I was wondering when colleges recalculate gpa, would they count a-'s as an A or as a B+?
It is not obvious what you mean by how your high school does grading.
Depends on the college. In many cases, they would start with the letter grades, convert to numbers (A = 4, B = 3, etc. – many do not use +/- in high school grades), add their own weightings if they do weighting, and then find the average.
Colleges don’t see what percentage your grades are. All they will see is the letter grade. Some schools (like the University of Michigan) will recalculate your GPA, counting A-'s as 4.0’s, but no one will recalculate your letter grades.
My school also sends a school profile and has the grade scales as the entire first page, so colleges are aware of the grade scales
do they care if an A- can be below a 90? Would they count A- as a standard 4.0 if A- is from 86.5-89.4 on the grade scale
Not true they only see letter grades. Different hs can have their own policies.
First, in the School Report the GC sends, your grading will be explained. You won’t be the only kid for whom an A level of work may be counted as less than 90. Second, many top colleges do not recalculate. If letter grades are included, they’ll look at those, unweighted. If it’s just numbers, they’ll go by the scheme your hs uses. Ie, they’ll understand an 89.5 is an A in honors and see this was an honors class. They do this year in and year out, know how to interpret.
Are you international?
I’m not international, but thank you for the response