I’m a sophomore in high school and I have a 4.59 weighted GPA and 4.14 unweighted GPA for my first semester. For freshmen year I had a 4.61 weighted GPA and 4.27 unweighted GPA overall (I’m not sure if the unweighted is supposed to be over 4.0 but I had to use a GPA calculator). I haven’t taken SATs or ACTs yet but I have taken PSATs and didn’t do so well, but I also didn’t study for those. At the moment, are these GPAs high enough to gt considered for UCLA and Columbia University?
You can find the average entering GPAs for many colleges in their online Common Data Set files.
The CDS section C11 reports GPA ranges on a 4.0 scale, although some colleges do report averages in section C12 that are above 4.0. Columbia apparently does not publish a CDS. Here are some recent averages for UCLA, Berkeley, and 3 Ivies:
4.33 UCLA (Fall 2016)
4.03 Harvard (2014-15)
3.93 UPenn (2015-16)
3.90 Princeton (2015-16)
3.87 UC Berkeley (2015-16)
These numbers aren’t too meaningful in isolation. UCLA has the highest of these averages, but probably is less selective than any of the Ivies (with the possible exception of Cornell). GPAs are interpreted in the context of other information (including course rigor, upward/downward trends, test scores, and your high school’s competitiveness.)
You will need to calculate your UC-GPA, and that won’t be really possible w/o junior year grades.
@tk21769 I do not think these GPAs re on the same scale. Some schools report weighted, some unweighted, some recalculate GPAs based on their own formulas. Foe example I know that Penn reports UW GPAs on its CDS.
In any case, one probably needs an UW GPA of 3.8+ with a fairly rigorous curriculum to have a chance at Columbia, Harvard, Penn etc.
When I used the UC GPA calculator and it said I have a 3.93 unweighted and 4.64 weighted. All my classes are honors except for electives. (My school doesn’t offer honors electives and cannot take AP courses until junior year).
Are you in-state CA? Not all Honors classes for in-state applicants are UC approved so you need to check your HS’s a-g course list: https://hs-articulation.ucop.edu/agcourselist#/list/search/institution
Only UC approved Honors courses get the extra honors points in the UC GPA calculation.
If you are OOS, no Honors courses are given the extra honors points, only AP/IB/DE courses but based on your school profile the UC’s will consider your course rigor.
The UC’s have three different UC GPA’s the many of the school’s will look at. Only UCB/UCLA consider the fully weighted UC GPA which would be the 4.64 GPA. What is your capped weighted UC GPA? This is the GPA most often quoted on the Freshman profiles for the rest of the UC’s.