Was just wondering this. If you fill out the SRAR they ask for your GPA. Why do they need this if they recalculate it anyway?
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Not all schools recalculate GPA. In fact, I would say you most don’t
Because SRAR allows the schools that use it to push the data entry of courses and grades to the students, which saves the college personnel time. (Of course it increases the time a student has to spend on the application)
So the SRAR isn’t used for the school to calculate grades to their own scale? Because wouldn’t a school that uses a different scale be at a disadvantage then? Case in point, our school calculates GPA based on assigning a value to each percentage. So for us a 92 is considered a B (3.0) and at another local school its considered an A (4.0). If a school recalculates then all is good.
No. At least not the primary purpose. The primary purpose of the SRAR is to look at transcripts across applications in a consistent manner, as well as easier interface with the university database
No. Colleges will certainly look at all applicants from a high school together and compare. But one high school does not have an advantage based in grading scale any more than a HS would have an advantage based on its rampant grade inflation. I’m assuming students from your HS got into good colleges in past years.
With any type of self-reported academic record (SSAR-SRAR or otherwise), a college can use the information to recalculate GPA using its own methods or do other analytics. This does not necessarily mean that all colleges using this method actually do so.
As noted above, the primary purpose of any kind of self-reported academic record is to offload the data entry work of converting transcripts into a standardized form onto the applicants. While this adds work for the applicant, it also means that the applicant does not have to worry about schools being slow at sending transcripts to colleges being applied to (or paying a lot of transcript fees, particularly for those who have attended multiple high schools and/or colleges while in high school).
My understanding is that most of the schools that use SRAR recalculate GPAs, which is much easier for them to do if the student enters all the data, and the data is in the same consistent manner.