<p>I see people posting UW and W GPAs that wouldn't make sense if they came from our school. For example in the thread for people who got into college with below a 3.7, some posted that they had something like a 3.6 unweighted, a 3.72 weighted and an IB diploma. At my kid's school where you get 1 quality point for every AP, IB or honors class where you get a C or better, an IB diploma requires a minimum of 12 IB classes, which means that even if you took the maximum number of classes a year (14 times 4), and didn't take a single honors class outside of IB, you'd get .21 extra points on your GPA, not the .12 described above.</p>
<p>Another posted posted that they have something like a 3.2 unweighted, and a 4.2 weighted. For my kid's school, with 1.0 being the maximum quality point that would mean that every single class was AP, honors, or IB. For us, that's impossible. At a bare minimum to graduate you'd have one PE credit and one "technology" credit that were unweighted. Above that, they don't weight for the first two years of foreign language (which are figured into GPA even if you took them in middle school) or for Algebra 1 (which also contributes to GPA if you take it in middle school). Very few kids end up without a level 1 or 2 language or Algebra 1 on their transcript somewhere.</p>
<p>Finally, there are people posting GPAs over 5.0. Again, that impossible at our school, so it makes me curious how they are computed.</p>
<p>What's the GPA formula for your school?</p>
<p>they kind of don’t for gpa.</p>
<p>basically your gpa (at my school) is out of a 4.0, and can’t get any higher than that. Your numerical gpa is out of a 100. None of these are weighted.</p>
<p>What is weighted is our class rank. They add 5 points for honors/AP classes to your final grade. So if you had a 87 in ap english, your transcript says 87, you get three points out of for for your gpa, an 87 calculated in for you numerical gpa, and a 92 calculated in for your class rank.</p>
<p>My school literally uses every honors class in determining your class rank. That includes honors spanish.</p>
<p>Supersnakes,</p>
<p>I should clarify. Our school weights every honors class. They just don’t offer honors levels for the first two years of language or Algebra 1. I think a large part of this is that the majority of kids take those in middle school.</p>
<p>Our school gives 1 extra grade point for any AP class, IB SL/HL class, and Honors Pre-calculus. All other classes are 4.0 for an A, 3.0 for a B, etc.</p>
<p>PE classes are given a letter grade, but don’t count in the Academic GPA calculation.</p>
<p>Using GPA for class ranking purposes gives incentives that may not be the right ones if the intent is to encourage students to take the most rigorous schedules that they can handle. For example:</p>
<p>Student 1: takes honors/AP/IB English, math, history, science, and foreign language
Student 2: takes the same schedule as student 1, but also has an additional non-weighted course like art, band, orchestra, auto shop, etc.</p>
<p>If both students get all A grades, then student 1 will have a higher weighted GPA than student 2, even though student 2 has a more rigorous schedule.</p>
<p>A better system for determining class rank is to count up grade *points<a href=“not%20grade%20point%20%5Bi%5Daverage%5B/i%5D”>/i</a>. Add bonus points for honors/AP/IB courses. For non-academic courses, divide the grade points by 10 so that an academic course’s grade points override those of a non-academic course, but an additional non-academic course still contributes.</p>
<p>Schools vary a ton on this. My daughter’s schools weighted GPA is out of 5.3 and the weights for different levels (advanced, honors, and AP) vary. All classes are included (even health). Also, the base 4.0 (before weighting) is only for an 95 or above.</p>
<p>My d15’s school weights only for rank - but it’s a crazy system that counts + and -, and has levels 1-4, plus AP. So an A+ can be worth anything from a 7.83 (for AP) to a 4.33 (level 4). </p>
<p>Plus, they call level 2 honors and level 1 accelerated. I’m not sure if colleges would see it that way, though – isn’t the level right below AP generally thought of as “honors”?</p>
<p>My kids school uses Standard A =5, Honors or AP A = 6. No + or - .
Can still take classes pass/fail. Will be phasing out rank for kids in Middle School now.
Our Valedictorian has not been the best & brightest, just the student willing to play the game.</p>
<p>Our high school uses quality points for Honors and AP, and the WGPA is only used for class rank, although it is reported on college apps along with the UW. 1-point for AP, .5 for Honors (only after freshman year). </p>
<p>The really competitive students boost their WGPA (for class rank purposes) by taking PE & Health (required to graduate) on-line or in the summer and adding a “zero-period” course (before school) so that they can take MORE Honors & AP classes than the typical student in a 7 period day.</p>
<p>I got to ask how you take online PE? Skype video of yourself doing jumping jacks?</p>
<p>Lol… something like that. You have to login and connect yourself to a heart rate monitor… I hear horror stories of kids failing PE because the technology is not reliable and if you go on vacation during that period of time, you have to make sure you have a good internet connection.</p>
<p>And you’re correct, it is a game and the most competitive student always wins!</p>
<p>I think I remember the AD at U of Miami telling us that they recalculate every applicant’s GPA so that they can compare apples to apples… maybe throwing out PE & Health, etc. and just counting the core courses… adding quality points for AP/IB & Honors… it is all very vague, but I do remember a reference to this on one of our tours this spring… thinking it was U of Miami?</p>
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<p>When I was in high school, they had only regular and honors courses. AP courses were just honors courses at the appropriate level (e.g. in math, they had regular and honors up to precalculus, followed by AP calculus BC, which was just the next level in the honors math sequence (no non-honors/AP calculus was offered); similar for foreign languages, where the fourth level honors course was designated as the AP course).</p>
<p>This is why weighted GPA is completely uninterpretable. I am amazed any colleges give it credence.</p>
<p>Between the uncertainties of how to convert a 100-point scale to a GPA out of 4 points, and the variations in how honors/AP courses are weighted, it’s just junk data.</p>
<p>Our local school system uses a 4 point scale (A = 4) with 0.5 extra point for an honors course and 1 point extra for an AP course. The school system in the next county over gives a full extra point for either honors OR AP. So you can see that these cannot be compared. I checked, and the high school I attended now gives 1 extra point for honors and 2 extra points for AP! (That was not the method back in my day.)</p>
<p>I’d like to believe that admissions offices don’t really look at the average–they look at the transcript and see the distribution of grades and course rigor. But I know that is not really possible.</p>
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<p>Some big state universities like CSU and UC recalculate GPAs for their purposes rather than using the high school’s notion of GPA.</p>
<p>[CSUMentor</a> - Plan for College - High School Students - GPA Calculator](<a href=“Cal State Apply | CSU”>Cal State Apply | CSU)</p>
<p>Note that UC’s Eligibility in Local Context is commonly thought to be based on top 9% class ranking, but it is actually based on the student’s UC-recalculated GPA compared against a benchmark of the top 9% threshold of UC-recalculated GPA from the previous classes at the high school.</p>
<p>^^^ logistically, how would they do that with the amount of applications they receive? Is someone data entering all the grades so they can be recalculated? Is there some program that automatically filters that info out?</p>
<p>CSU and UC have students put their courses and grades into the application, from which GPA is recalculated. Transcripts are used to verify the courses and grades later.</p>
<p>^ Yeah, it’s really not too uncommon for schools to recalculate GPA’s. University of Florida does it and it receives I think over 30,000 applications a year. </p>
<p>Weighted GPA’s really are pointless for a variety of reasons. For one, most high schools and districts do them differently, so it’s not a valid indicator of anything except comparing students within that school. They can’t accurately be compared to someone from another school. Secondly, the way they are calculated in most cases is quite ridiculous. </p>
<p>At my school, weighted GPA’s are calculated by going with the normal A = 4, B = 3, etc. scale and then AFTER averaging, you would, for an A in an honors course ADD .04, for a B in an honors course, add .02; for an A in an AP course add .08, B in AP add .04, C in AP add .02. It’s really dumb because theoretically, if there were infinite AP and Honors courses, your GPA has no limit, literally. </p>
<p>Our valedictorian has a 7.6 GPA, salutatorian 6.9. This alone shows how stupid our weighted GPA system is because those numbers almost aren’t even impressive. They’re too high and make someone who doesn’t know how the system works (i.e. everyone outside of my school, such as parents, etc.) just thinks “oh wow, that seems high, but it must be commonplace nowadays to get there.”</p>
<p>we homeschool and weight .5 honors 1 ap/college BUT our HS weights 2.1 for honors/ap/AND IB… and 1.5 for regular classes…
this is why the schools MUST show their weighting and colleges re-work GPAs</p>