With my husband transferring to Indiana with a new career we moved our high school senior as well. He was attending a rigorous selective enrollment school with mostly honors classes. The new high school is not honoring his GPA of 4.4 from the old school and in doing so the transcript sent from them will be 3.6. Has anyone addressed this for a positive change? Has anyone had experience with how colleges have analyzed these students’ transcripts and how scholarships analyze the GPA differences? How is this an acceptable practice?
I believe students can self report grades from multiple high school directly on the common app. You should also be able to send those transcripts along with that school’s grading scale/school report.
Be aware though that many colleges will look at unweighted GPAs (or recalculate), and the practice of this new school to just report unweighted is not unique. Grading scales vary widely school to school.
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A 4.4 is either weighted or on a non-traditional scale.
Perhaps they simply unweighted it?
Not all schools provide weighted grades.
I would talk to the guidance counselor there, expressing your concern, to see what they say.
It is unlikely to affect his applications at all, since you will presumably order a transcript from each of the high schools that he attended. Perhaps you can reach out to his previous guidance counselor, and ask that he/she include a cover letter explaining their weighting system, the rigor of the classes that he took there, and even possibly to say something good about your child’s achievement while at that high school, if they can.
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My understanding agrees with @parentologist. I think that you will need to send two high school transcripts (one from each school), and university admissions will look at your son’s actual grades along with the profiles from both schools.
Different high schools in the US compute GPA in wildly different ways. One daughter attended a public high school where a 97 in a regular class is an A+, but only counts as a 3.7 towards the GPA. This did not seem to matter at all when she applied to universities. At one point talking to a colleague I was surprised to discover that his daughter had a 4.0, but then found out that at her school a 90 is an A-, but still counts as a 4.0.
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It sounds like the took the class but weighed it on their scale. There are a few schools that just take the GPA as reported. At the more competitive schools his GPA would likely have been recalculated to something similar to what the HS did in their calculation.
My younger daughter transferred when she was a junior. We had the opposite situation where her old high school did not weight and her new school did. Her GPA was very close to 4.0, but her ranking within her new school would would have been below 10%. I had to advocate for her to get her new school to weigh her advance courses. Another issue was her old high school did not designate AP courses, but many of her courses were AP equivalent or higher. After some discussions and negotiations with new school, they did give her extra credits for those advance classes. I was the one who worked with the school. I didn’t leave it to D2 to do it. One thing I will point out is the school tends to be more protective of their long time students rather than new transfers, especially when ranking is important with scholarships.
In the OP’s case, I would ask the old high school to send his transcript with indicative ranking within his class along with his first semester transcript from his new school. I would also get recs from his old school and maybe one from his new school.
When D2 transferred junior year I advised her to get to know few teachers well I order to get good recs.
If your kid is looking for scholarship money then his ranking will be important. His application should be read in reference to where he attended school for 3 years.
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Following on what @parentologist said, for future students reading this thread: (perhaps as part of a move to a different school) Ask for an official transcript and cover letter before you leave. And also, contact information for if you need to make requests after the fact…
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Thank you to all who weighed in. What is the minimum SAT that colleges will look at to give merit scholarships? How do the universities and private organizations analyze the GPA for scholarships?
That depends on the college.
For example, U of Arizona has a GPA table and that’s all they use. Same with Miami of Ohio.
Alabama and UAH, on the other hand, have a stated table requiring a certain GPA and test as does UAH.
Other schools do this as well - but don’t disclose - so you don’t really know. Many schools will have tables but most will not.
So depends on the school you are looking at, etc.
If you disclose your stats and budget and desires, we might be able to point you into a certain direction.
See the four links below - the first two are GPA only (Arizona unweighted, Miami weighted). The last two are unweighted GPA and test score.
Good luck.
Scholarships | Costs and Financial Aid | Miami University (miamioh.edu)
Out-of-State Freshman Scholarships – Scholarships | The University of Alabama (ua.edu)
UAH - Admission & Aid - Freshman Out-of-State Academic Scholarships
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Even though it sounds like the new HS is including the previous six semesters of courses and grades from the previous HS on the transcript, I agree with the others you should get an official transcript from the previous HS, plus their school profile (get that online or from the HS GC).
Ultimately, after applying, I encourage your S to reach out to each college admissions officer for his area and ask them what information would be most helpful to them, and how they want it sent to them.
Your S will likely have to enter his courses and grades in the common app and/or SRAR, so he will also need that info (exact names of courses from his old school, level, and grades).
Separately, it sounds like you are concerned about finances and scholarships, as so many people are. Colleges give by far the most scholarship money, while external scholarships are highly competitive and can require a lot of work for little payout. Some colleges will also decrease their financial aid package accordingly if the student does earn any external scholarships, and these scholarships often must be signed over directly to the college.
If you want college ideas where your son can get merit aid, let us know his stats and current list. It’s helpful to posters if we know whether you will qualify for need based aid. Each college should have a net price calculator on their website, do that for the college’s on your S’s list.