Our HS uses a decidedly non-standard 4.0 scale barely-weighted GPA. Many schools recompute by themselves, but we’ve been told by one school that they don’t recompute but we can have the guidance counselor send in a recomputed 4.0 scale weighted GPA. But when I google this, there seem to be as many ways of computing a GPA as people who do it. Is there a standard, and if so, what is it?
There is no real standard used everywhere.
Students in California will see the common use of the UC/CSU method of calculating GPAs as a “standard” there, but that is obviously irrelevant to students not applying to UC/CSU schools. Other colleges may have their own GPA calculation methods, though these typically do not appear to be published like the UC/CSU method.
Colleges will look at your submitted grades/classes and weight GPA’s based on their standards, so the best rule of thumb is to calculate your GPA on an unweighted 4.0 scale for comparison.
I agree with both of the above. If you’re applying to a school like Bama that will use whatever WGPA is on the record then I would look at some alternatives in schools near you and try to convince your HS to put that down.
Hi @MathMomVT!! Your rfriend here.
My daughter went to one school 9-10 grades with 0-100 grading. Then she went to another and did an IB Diploma for 11-12 grades which is 0-7. Never knew what her 4.0 scale GPA was…colleges figure it out. The only time there was an issue was for our State Flagship which awards scholarships based on GPAs , but a quick email sorted that out. So send your transcript and the college will figure it out.
The school has specifically said they will not figure it out for us, and to get our GC to do it. They don’t specify how they expect it to be done. It’s crazy. Anyhow, we’ll need to find some standard way of doing it and send that in. Just trying to pick something fairly, versus whatever gives him the highest score.
Then I would use the UC one. It’s a least recognized in the “industry”.
Interesting… so there is an advantage for a high school to use extremely exaggerated weighting systems (the ones that produce 5.something or 6.something weighted GPAs that are occasionally reported by students).