<p>Since my school doesn't use a 4.0 system I have no idea what my GPA is. Are honors classes 4.5 or 5 for weighted? And are AP classes the same as honors?</p>
<p>Weighting grades for honors and AP is school specific. I’ve heard some schools weight honors at 0.5 and AP at 1.0 so an A would give you a 4.5 or a 5. My school weights them at 0.01 for honors and 0.1 for AP. Remember, the weighting is irrelevant to the colleges, it only makes a difference in your class rank.</p>
<p>The colleges will get your grades without the weighting and then when they recalculate the GPA they may not even include all of your classes. Some of the colleges I have spoken with will only use grades for math, english, science, history, and a second language. This can change your GPA as you would see it.</p>
<p>To find out what your school is going to report as your GPA simply contact your guidance department and ask about the transcripts, if honors and APs are weighted, etc. They should be happy to explain this to you.</p>
<p>Some universities are going to recalculate, some will not. Weighting varies drastically from not at all to 2pts for an AP. That is why it is so useless to compare GPAs on CC either on chance me threads or result threads for accepted students in school forums. There is no context, no equalizer, so no way to judge. What an admissions reader has is the profile your school sends with your transcript. It is a key to your transcript explaining your grading scale, weighting, number of APs and restrictions to taking them, etc. It helps the reader decipher just what your transcript says about your academic performance in context of your school…what was available to you. A 4.3 at a school that weights .5 and offers 10APs can be more impressive then a 4.3 at a school that offers 20 APs and weights 2.0 for APs. Context is everything.</p>
<p>So, some universities may strip all weighting, use only core academic subjects, and recalculate GPA. Some won’t bother to go through the math, but will rely on the profile to help them determine what your transcript actually means. If the schools website doesn’t specifically state you can certainly make a quick call to admissions to see how they do this. It is far from universal.</p>