How do Ivy Leagues change your transcript? Does senior year count?

Applying to College
1

Including junior year classes, I will have taken 12 APs. My school adds 7 points onto AP and Honors classes, so while I have a 92.4 unweighted, my weighted numeric average is 97 which is what appears on the transcript my school gives out.

Will Ivy League schools (or similarly big names like MIT and Caltech) recalculate the unweighted? I’m very concerned since this leaves me with about a 3.7 GPA when you convert to numeric, and that probably isn’t enough when there are so many 4.0s and 3.9s out there.

Having an upward trend would help but I earned my best grades in 9th grade and recently I’ve fallen. I can still try for straight A’s for 2nd semester junior year, but do Ivies count first semester senior grades?

(I’ll trying for perfect SAT/ACT scores too, but even so I feel I’ll still come off as a slacker.)

Again, this is advice aimed for getting into an Ivy-tier school (I’m aware that these are probably alright with most colleges and it’ll be okay! I’d like a brutally honest response, though).

Thanks for reading strangers!

2

Schools have varying methods to recaculate GPA, and I don’t think many of them are common (public) knowledge, @toffeecube . They will all count first semester senior grades, though, afaik.

3

I really hope they don’t have time to strip everyone’s transcript. On Prepscholar they say they just look at your course rigor and also roughly judge by difficulty of the school

Also, good to hear there’s a chance to show improvement senior year! thanks for replying @marvin100

4

Try not to think about equating an 100 scale to a 4.0 scale. They’ll be familiar with both and won’t need to convert one to the other and, as @marvin100 points out, their methods are proprietary.

They will, however, pay close attention to your transcript. Once you’ve reviewed hundreds of these you can size up an applicant’s focus and performance very quickly.