The title says it all. In my high school, you literally need to get a 100 in every class to have a 4.0 unweighted GPA. It’s just how my school does GPA calculations. And same for weighted GPA as well.
So, hypothetically, if you get a 99 in every class at your HS, what would your GPA be?
Unweighted it would be a 3.95
Grade inflation is purposefully built into the system at my school. I have a 4.0 UW (and something like a 4.7 W) and I’m not even in the top 10%, or at least I wasn’t last time they calculated rank.
I don’t know if it’s that it isn’t easy at my school or there aren’t many overachievers. My school doesn’t use a 4.0 scale, but my UW is something like a 3.7 or 3.8 and I’m in the top 10.
As a person who attended high school in the 80’s in Canada, all I can say is my D21’s classes are much easier and much more lenient in grading. She attends a private school with a rigorous IB program and I believe it’s markedly less difficult to obtain straight A’s in her school even though the percentage needed for an A is higher than mine was. At D21’s school, 95% and above is an A. At my Canadian public school, 86% and above was an A. However, we had final exams throughout high school where the exam was 50% of the final grade. For D21’s classes, the final exam was about 10% of the final grade. In addition, I was astonished when she received study packs from most teachers, outlining the areas to study. We received no such materials in the 80’s. I know…I sound like one of those parents talking about how she had to walk uphill in the snow to school every day. :-).
Your HS will send a school profile that describes the grading system along with each transcript so your grades will be reviewed in the proper context. Admissions officers are used to handling different grading systems. For example our HS doesn’t weight and students are not hurt in the college admissions process, my D was in a program where there were written evaluations rather than grades and that was no issue, international grading systems are different etc. Dont give it another thought.
A few colleges go so far as to recalculate GPA based on their own criterial (ex.unweighted, academic subjects only etc.)
Update: 4.59, 43 of about 360 
We have A+ grades which start at 97. Most kids only mention weighted gpa’s since that is what report cards say. I know the highest weighed gpa was a 4.8 which only 1 kid had at graduation. I would say it would be pretty difficult to get straight A + in every class but a bit easier to get As then A plusses. In some cases however there are definitely some students challenging themselves with say an AP class that really would have been better off in honors so grades are lower though rigor higher.
It’s actually pretty hard. My school has a really hard grading scale and extreme grade deflation.
@happy1 thanks. I didn’t know that lol.
@awesomepolyglot congratulations on getting top 10%
I’m not in the top 10 percent, though.
@CavsFan2003 My school is on the same page if you’re enrolled in lots of honors and AP courses, particularly the APs. All the APs and honors math courses at my school, especially the humanities APs, are known for massive grade deflation. However, regular courses and electives are known to be very easy to get an A in.
Have a good day!
15 out of ~450 or so had an unweighted 4.0 in my graduating class