Hello, I know there are more factors that go into this but on average…what is the best school(s) that I could get into ending high school with a somewhat descent 3.35 gpa (pretty rigurous) however, with 2300 SAT scores?
3.35 is low but 2300 is great. Why such the low GPA? Are you taking a lot of AP courses/honors courses? If you can pull your GPA up to like a 3.5+, you’ll be okay.
@TheDidactic Well a couple AP’s and Full IB. Wait, could you just explain to me how to convert 100 scale classes to 4.0 gpa scales? And should this only be academic?
Here’s a general link that I’ve come across in my past travels. (http://gpacalculator.net/gpa-scale/3.9-gpa/)
Are you sure that’s right, in that case its 3.16 for academic classes lol @TheDidactic
There isn’t really a system for converting percentages to GPA, because it varies. Colleges will be looking at your percentages if that’s what you get on your transcript.
You don’t just take your average and convert to a 4.0 GPA. You have to use a weighted average for all classes. For instance an 89 would be a B in a class so even if you had a 98 average you would not have a 4.0. It would be a weighted average if you had any classes which were 1/2 year and only worth 1/2 credit.
^^^
Wait, what?
A=4.0 (90-100)
B=3.0 (80-89)
C=2.0 (70-79)
- .5 for honors
- 1.0 for AP/DE
I never understood anything about GPA
Basically if you went to a high school that didn’t give letter grades you’re at a significant disadvantage IMO
Especially when you’re like me and you take all AP classes and then get a less than stellar unweighted GPA. I still got in to my schools but only with luck
And by less than stellar I mean that if it went by letter grades it would have been 4.0 easily, but instead it was more around 3.6 all through HS
@moscott, yes, and? Each class would get that conversion, then divide by number of credits. And those + points for honors or AP are not consistent across all schools (or even most schools). That’s why colleges use the UW GPA. If the OP’s HS doesn’t use a WGPA then it’s not reported. You don’t get to make one up.
@Erin’s Dad “… even if you had a 98 average you would not have a 4.0.”
I guess this is what threw me off. Looking back at your post I think I know what you are saying. Here they don’t go by % but simply letter grade for A, B, etc…Thus a %93. 90, 91,96,91, 92 and 97 is a 4.0(UW). If I’m correct, what you were saying is if he had an A in all courses(%98) but then received a B(%89), he would then no longer have a 4.0, correct?
Yes
@uno46z I feel for you. My D was in a similar situation. Not only with the lower GPA and higher SAT, but also her school graded on a 100-pt scale so we could never really figure out what her GPA was for these discussions! I would recommend you stop by your guidance office and ask them if they can give you an estimated 4.0 scale unweighted GPA. They may have a system in place for this purpose. If not, you’ll have to use a guess.
I would start with all your classes, not just the academic ones. That’s the GPA you’ll see on most threads here on CC (an overall GPA.) It’s true that most colleges are going to recalculate your GPA on their OWN scale, assigning their own weight to your IB & AP classes, and probably eliminating non-core classes, and you have no way of knowing how that will change for most schools. If you want to get super technical about it, you can search online. Somewhere (I can’t find it now) there is a tedious calculator that lets you enter in each classes grade and the number of credits it is worth, and gives you a final GPA (what Erin’s Dad is talking about). But it’s very tedious!
What’s your 100-pt GPA? The scale I used equates 3.35 to 88.5. Is that your GPA?
For what it’s worth, at the end of junior year my D had a 88.7. By halfway through senior year she’d raised it to 89.25, which was calculated as 3.46 UW and 3.9 weighted with some IB classes. Her SAT was high but not as high as yours, and she had very good SATII scores. She got into her first choice school and was waitlisted at USN #4 LAC. So… don’t give up hope.
You asked “what are the best schools”. What sort of school do you want to go to? My feeling is that the smaller LACs tend to be more holistic in their admissions process, and more likely to look at your overall application rather than just “the numbers”. If you tell us more about what you want to study and what type of school you want to go to, and what your ECs are, people might be able to give you some suggestions.
Another thing that helped us is to open an account at the College Board’s Big Future web site. You can enter in the courses you’ve taken, your GPA & test scores, and then browse the colleges. For each college, go to the “applying” tab and click on GPA and scores, and you’ll see a visual graph of where your stats fall in their average accepted student range. You can save schools that interest you to a “My Colleges” list, and also run the Net Price Calculators directly from the pages to see if the school is affordable for your family’s particular situation.
Good luck!
Far, far better to have a high GPA and lower test scores.
@excanuck99 @staceyneil @“Erin’s Dad” ok well do you know any scholarships from any certain colleges that are for high SAT scores?/