Would you have to literally take every single AP ever offered, get a beautiful score in each, and the rest of your electives, if you even have any room left, should be honors and similarly perfect? Would that even get you above a 5.0?
(Assuming they are on a 4.0 weighted scale)
Tentative bump? FYI, this is not intended to be a rhetorical question: I am genuinely curious as to just how many AP classes one has to take to get a GPA this high.
My gpa right now is above a 8.0. For my school, we add 0.04 each sem for honors class and 0.08 for each sem of an ib and ap class to your unweighted (out of 4.0)
Different schools compute weighted GPAs differently. For example, an A in an Honors class might be worth 5 and an A in an AP class, 6. All As in all Honors would get you a 5.0 without any AP classes.
Right now, I am taking 4 APs, with As in all of them. I’ve taken honors since I started high school. My WGPA is 4.53. On scattergraphs on Naviance of my classmates who have applied to colleges I am considering, some of their WGPAs are above 5. On that scale, how would you get that high of a GPA? @JerryTN
At my school, Weighted GPAs have regular classes as 4, honors as 5, and APs as 6, so kids in the top of the class with all ap schedules get pretty close to a 6
Different high schools have different weighting systems. For instance my son’s school has A+=4.67, A=4.33, A-4.0 and +1 for honors classes, +2 for AP classes. The top 5% of students have GPAs in excess of 5.5 and typically take around 10-12 AP classes out of the 24 offered.
Your school will be different because the grading system is likely different.
If you’re referring to a scale where 5.0 = A in honors/AP class, it’s mathematically impossible. My guess is that the scale is actually 6.0 = A in AP class, 5.0 = A in honors class, but you’d have to ask your guidance counselor.
Some high schools have exaggerated weighting methods, such as AP course = +2 or something like that.
While this can be an advantage when applying to those colleges that accept the high school’s weighted GPA as is (as University of Alabama does for its well known scholarships: http://scholarships.ua.edu/faq/ ), the differences in high school GPA weighting systems means that high school weighted GPAs are not very useful to those outside the high school, or who otherwise know what the weighting system is.
Yet lots of students and parents post high school weighted GPAs (without describing the weighting system) around these forums expecting others to find them useful in helping them determine what colleges may be reach/match/safety.
You need to find out from your high school what its weighting system is. Then you can see what would increase your weighted GPA there, assuming that it is important for class ranking purposes because you will apply to a class-rank-focused college.
I will try to find that info. Thanks, all.
What I found about my daughter’s high school, on how it can have 4.8 scale when it only gives 0.3 for honors and 0.5 for AP, was that it gives 4.3 for A+. So A+ on a AP course can give 4.8.
If your school gives A+ 4.3, and +1.0 for AP courses, then I guess over 5.0 would be possible, although improbable.
That sounds about right, I think. In that case, though, 4.8 would be the absolute max, with A+s in all AP classes. Still wouldn’t get above 5.
And @ everyone who responded, the scale is not so high above a 5. I’m talking like 5.05, 5.08 absolute max.
In our district, APs are the only classes that give additional +1 pt. Dual enrollment, honors, regular classes are all based on 4.0. I have to say it’s a shock to see how the weighting is so different in the various school districts.
Highest GPA I’ve seen in our district is a 4.25, but typically the top students are around 4.15.
Because there are so many different ways high schools weight their grades, highly selective admissions look at the unweighted GPA, with an eye for students who took the most advanced core classes the school offered. Looking at class rank is also a way to evaluate top students. I should also be pointed out that students that take high school credited classes in middle school accelerated programs, such as algebra I, II and pre-calc, as well as in honors level foreign language may not get weighted credit for these HS classes in their school’s weighting system. School districts that require PE, health and art to graduate HS also impact weighted GPAs.
My sons high school gave 4 for an A in a regular class or Honors class and 5 for an A in an AP or IB class. It used to bother me that people would get extra credit for Honors classes but throughout the college search period I learned the colleges know how to make the gpa’s equivalent across the board.
Some schools do it out of 6.0, with Honors being 5.0 and APs 6.0
Our schools give a +.5 for honors and a +1 for AP (with most APs offered in only 11th and 12th). I think a 4.5 is possible. There is no “A+” grade. The school doesn’t offer honors classes in foreign languages, everyone takes two years of PE, and many students take fine arts, so most students have a fair number of unweighted classes.
Based on comments from the guidance counselors in Naviance, there are a fair number of schools that use the school’s weighted GPA (no unweighted GPA is provided on the transcript). I don’t think this happens with schools that are on the 6.0 scale so there probably is some unfair advantage to it.
Different schools compute GPA in different ways. This makes weighted GPA pretty much impossible to compare. This in turn makes the “chance me” posts on CC hard to trust. However, I am confident that admissions folks at universities are not confused.