At my school, an A- and an A are both 4.0 so I was wondering if it matters in other schools if you get an A or an A-. Since a lot of schools don’t even report A- or A+ and just say A, can/do colleges care about the -/+ in admissions?
Yes they usually matter. Varies from college to college though.
how can colleges do that if some high schools dont report +/-
The difference is negligible if it’s one class. It depends on how many classes you have an A- in.
Typically colleges are looking for a lot more than a straight A academic record. An A- isn’t going to break you if everything else is in place.
At my kids’ school, an A is a 4.0 and an A- is a 3.7, so it makes a difference, especially for class ranks. Someone with a 3.7 GPA is not going to be in the top 10%.
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High school counselors provide the colleges with an information sheet about the high school that includes the grading matrix. High schools assign grades differently, so colleges need this context. A veteran Admissions Officer will know the schools in their geographic area.
At our HS, only an ‘A+’ (97-100) is given a 4.0. An ‘A’ (93-96) is 3.67. An ‘A-’ (90-92) is a 3.33. So at your HS, a student with all A-'s would have a 4.0; whereas at our HS, that same student would have a 3.33. Pretty different.
The colleges know that schools calculate GPA very differently which is why they look at each school’s system.
You need to be careful about interpreting the GPAs listed on CC (and elsewhere).
In college admissions, colleges can do whatever they want within the law. 
As others have said, what matters more is where your GPA falls within your class. Colleges have many tools to help put a GPA into perspective, including recs and the school profile. At the end of the day, however, it is what it is, so focus on things that you can affect.
Every school is different. An A in my at my daughter school is from 90-100. IMO they should just do away with the letter grading system and the 4.0 scale and just use the numbers. You would think it would be easier that way.
My son’s high school also doesn’t distinguish A+, A or A- in terms of GPA calculation. The college admissions don’t just look at the GPA of the student. They also look at the course rigor, school profile, teacher recommendations and EC’s, among other things. My son received a bunch of A- this past semester, but I don’t worry about it because of his high level of EC accomplishments and involvements in the performing arts, which I believe the admissions folks do take into serious consideration in making proper assessments of my son. Still, you should try to raise the grades from A- to A if at all possible for this semester, especially if the transcript does show such. My son’s school transcript, I believe, does show “-” and “+” so he’s been working very hard to avoid having any more “-” for this semester.
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@WhataProcess have you found this disadvatages students from your school. I would think it would. A 3.3 is normally a B+.
@SeekingPam I actually don’t know. I have only had one graduate from this school so far, and the system was new/changed in 9th grade (if I recall), so I don’t have much experience to go on. And our school does not have a lot of kids applying/attending highly selective schools. I actually hadn’t given it much thought, although I have always been wary of GPAs quoted here on CC and elsewhere because it was clear to me that our grade scale is so different. I’ve just assumed that the admissions folks understand this stuff…
That said, it does concern me a bit whether all colleges really spend the time to understand each high school’s method. If I recall, on the CommonApp where it asks for GPA it says to put ‘weighted’ if you have that. I would guess that our school’s weighted GPAs are also ‘different’. Makes me wonder what the colleges are really using when they publish “average GPA of admitted students”. I think I may bring it up to admissions staff at some of the selective schools my juniors will be applying to, to see how they approach those differences. It seems I have read on CC some references to colleges ‘recalculating’ GPAs (presumably to put them all on the same scale) but I have never heard that directly from any admissions folks, so it would be interesting to hear what they have to say on the issue. Also should ask for a copy of our school’s profile, which I have never seen, because now I’m even more interested in how the GPA scale is presented there.
just found this on another thread
If they don’t recalculate it would seem that any quoted “average GPA” of accepted/admitted students is ultimately not very useful. One kid’s 3.5 is another kid’s 4.0. Thank goodness for “holistic” admissions!
Sounds like if you have anything other than an A+ kid you are at a disadvantage and they will not make allowances for your schools system. As for evaluating within their own school, for small schools there is not much to compare and students who are not A+ might be more easily dismissed (our school has a somewhat similar problem due to grade deflation rather than the grading system itself - the second highest grade on the last AP Chem Exam was a 91 and the third was an 88 or so and that was with a curve! Last year with the same teacher more than half the class got 5s and almost no one got below a 3, maybe 1 person. Yet a lot of those 5s got A- or worse as final grades.)