<p>Hey guys, Im a sophomore (going into junior year in late August) and I ended the year with an unweighted 3.52 GPA (Chamber Ensemble - A, Sports Training - A, AP Euro - A , English 10 Honors - A- , Spanish 3 (regular) - B+, Precalculus Honors B+, Chemistry Honors B+).</p>
<p>Do colleges care a lot that you took a lot of Honors/AP and ahead-of-your-grade courses (Like a sophomore taking Precalc honors when most sophomores are in Algebra 2 or Geometry), or are they more focused on how high the unweighted GPA is regardless of how difficult a student's courses were (Like if a student got an unweighted 4.0 but took all Regular classes)?</p>
<p>Top colleges want you to have a high GPA in difficult courses, and even that isn’t enough most of the time. Anyone can pull a few strings and accelerate ahead of where they should be…your performance in the hard classes does matter.</p>
<p>I’m not entirely sure about less selective colleges, but I assume they mostly look at the unweighted GPA but also consider whether you took honors classes. (At some of the Common Data Sets I’ve looked at for less selective public schools, course rigor is secondary to GPA.)</p>
<p>Also, keep in mind that a lot of colleges will recalculate your GPA according to their own scale. They will also look at your class rank and school profile to determine how good a 3.52 GPA is at your school. Some schools have grade deflation and a 3.52 would result in a very high class rank. At others, there are a ton of people with 4.0s. </p>
<p>What colleges are you looking at? I would suggest looking at their Common Data Sets to see if they value GPA over course rigor or if they’re valued equally.</p>
<p>I’m also a sophomore and am facing a similar problem. I’ve been told that if you work hard and do somewhat well in all the difficult courses it will show both in the transcript and in letters of recommendation. If you show the teachers you are willing to put in the time than you will get good letter of rec. which most colleges pay close attention to.</p>
<p>If you have a low unweighted, then it means that you have the initiative to take hard classes but you don’t do well in them. That’s a red flag.</p>
<p>Nobody cares about unweighted, ur fine.</p>
<p>I also found out too late in the game, but really your GPA isn’t bad and if your school ranks with weight GPA, your rank higher and it will trump the GPA (my school doesn’t rank :() Really what you want to do is take enough hard classes in the subjects you excel in (math for me) so that you can get your counselor to check the ‘most rigorous’ box and then take standard classes in your worst subjects (english for me) to raise the unweighted GPA.</p>
<p>Find out which GPA your school reports on the transcript. Some will recalculate, but many only care about the GPA as reported by your school, which they will compare against your school profile.</p>
<p>“Nobody cares about unweighted”</p>
<p>Some high schools don’t calculate a weighted GPA at all, and the ones that do all have different standards.</p>
<p>Being in accelerated or honors classes is the main thing! GPA is second, you wanna make sure it doesn’t go below 3.5
Some colleges say “GPA is just a number it cant say much”
and then other colleges say"its a way of looking at 4 year of your life"
who know?!?!?</p>
<p>OP, what colleges are you looking at?
I generally think it’s better to keep your GPA as high as possible because less selective schools will still accept you if you have a high GPA even if you didn’t take a ton of AP classes, and more selective schools won’t accept you with a low GPA even if you took honors classes. Some merit aid will be based on GPA too. If you can take honors/AP classes and still have a high GPA (probably greater than 3.5, but I don’t want to be too exact), then do that. If you can’t, it’s probably better to take more regular classes and apply to less selective colleges.</p>
<p>(You also need to consider the actual experience of honors vs. regular classes at your school. Where I live the honors classes are the only thing worth taking and the regular classes are where they put all the people who always seem like they’re about to drop out. In some cases you’ll want to pick the class in which you’d learn the most regardless of the grade.)</p>
<p>Have strong grades in difficult courses if possible.</p>
<p>you need to have strong grades(aka 3.9+, 3.8 may cut it too) in the most difficult courses if you even want a shot at top 10 schools.</p>
<p>Depends on the school.</p>
<p>For reference, I have a 4.0 UW over high school, 4.64 weighted. The 2 Indiana public U’s view my GPA differently. </p>
<p>In Indiana, IU only looks at weighted GPA for admission and scholarships, so whatever the school puts down is your GPA. For Purdue, they look at unweighted GPA though
I do know that Purdue requires a high unweighted (3.8) for the Honors College. A 3.8 is pretty tough IMO with all Honors…I only got a 93 flat in Honors English and got 94’s in a bunch of other classes. A 90-92 is a 3.67 which is below the required 3.8. Multiple B’s pretty much kill you.</p>
<p>I would recommend taking a mix of AP’s/honors and regulars with AP’s/honors in the classes you’re strongest in. For me, my strengths are math and science(if it’s math-based); I only took Honors English because my parents forced me to and I hate it with a burning passion(Me and literature don’t get along)…many people are the opposite though and I’d recommend regular math/science and advanced English for them.</p>