Hello CC,I am a freshman in high school.
I started last semester with high expectations,and I was able to fulfill most of them. The main problem was my Honors Civics class,which I had significantly underestimated and had a B in. During the last 3 weeks of the semester,I was able to drive it up almost 6% to around ~92.5%. On Finals week,I knew I had played my game perfectly to turn this A- into an A. Only miss one point on the final,and then use a corrections opportunity(he gave the whole class) to recoup 2 points to vault me over the 93.5% mark to get my pure 4.0 UW. This didn’t happen,because our school uses a GPA system where A- s and A+s equal an 4.0 in calculation. It was for this reason my teacher didn’t give me the points I deserved,saying that it “didn’t matter.” My counselor was unyielding,she wouldn’t round it up at 93.26% despite my story,and told me to talk to the teacher again.(he still didn’t budge)
I was pretty jaded that my hard work and careful strategy to get what I wanted ended up as an illusory “It doesn’t matter,the colleges will take the GPA we give them,you still have a 4.0.” I know I should’ve not ended up having to use the corrections opportunity,but it still stings whenever I think about it.
Which leaves me with a few questions. I assume most colleges that would really bother between a 3.8 gpa and a 4.0 gpa would recalculate my gpa,taking out classes like P.E and having the A- as a 3.75? Surely they wouldn’t take the gpa my school gives them,especially if they have such a weird gpa system? My school doesn’t rank,which makes this even more confusing. I know that GPA is relative to the high school who hands it out,but how would a college distinguish me from the 10-15 other kids(out of 300) who get a “4.0” at my school? Most likely they will use a recalculated gpa,but then what scale do they use? 93=A,92=A,92.5=A,89.5=A or even 94=A?
How do they account for things like having a semester long grading scale(makes it difficult to get grades above 97%) and just the overall difficulty of my coursework if they have no rank to base it off of vs other grading systems with higher inflation?
Lastly,has this theoretically knocked me out of the “4.0” scholarships? Do they take my school’s gpa or use their own scale for confirming my gpa(in general)?
I seek this discussion more as an understanding of the GPA calculation process,because its confusing to me. I know that if still keep getting good grades, I will get in somewhere that fits my ability but is not necessarily what I want. I am still clueless about my ECs and I’m not inclined to volunteer just to check off the really sappy cliches that colleges dig. This is why I need to have my GPA and tests on lock,and why I am stressing out about this. There is still more of a risk of getting more A-s and below,which is why I want to understand this more.