Hi,
So I go to a private high school (boarding) in the top 15 nationwide, and I personally was surprised by the environment and rigorous academic requirements and therefore got a 3.1 GPA freshman year.
However, the entire year my school claimed they didn’t count freshman year towards GPA and that colleges would only receive it as a part of the transcript, however, I slowly began to bite my nails and doubt them.
Is this a possibility? Will colleges calculate their own GPA, also should I be extremely concerned that for the sophomore year I will not be placed into any honors but I expect I will in junior year?
Thank you,
Anonymous User
I am going by your username and assuming you are a California HS student? The California UC’s and Cal states do not use Freshman year grades in their GPA calculation for admission but they will review your Freshman grades to determine you have met and passed all the UC/CSU a-g course requirements. Stanford is another school that does not consider Freshman year grades and some schools will recalculate your GPA based on their own criteria. The UC’s and CSU’s use only 10-11th grades in their GPA calculation but the majority of colleges/universities will consider 9-11th grades and also 12th mid-year grades in their admission decisions.
Learn from your mistakes and forge forward. Show improvement Sophomore year and continue to increase your HS course rigor.
Hello,
Thanks for your reply. I understand what you are saying about certain colleges not counting it through GPA however what if the actual high school I go to claims that they do not include it in the GPA and it will have no relevance when it comes to that specific area. I am just a little confused onto if thta is a false claim on their side just to encourage students not to stress?
If your school is in California and is one where the vast majority of students going to 4-year colleges go to UCs or CSUs, then the counselor may be assuming that a UC or CSU is your college destination. Note that one CSU is an exception; CPSLO includes grades from 9th grade for GPA recalculation.
Your school may also be telling you that it will not include not include 9th grade as part of your gpa, weighted or unweighted. Many schools accept what your schools states is your gpa when giving out merit awards.
Other schools may recalculate your gpa to another method - some figure in all courses, others only 4 years of science, some only required courses. Your school can’t guarantee what a school in Kansas is going to do, or even a private school in California will do.
Universities will see your actual grades on your transcript. Different high schools in the US compute GPA so differently that it is not possible to directly compare them. For example, where we live a 97 in a regular CP class is an A+, but only counts as a 3.7 towards your GPA. I have heard of high schools where a 90 is an A, and counts as a 4.0 (if I interpreted correctly what a friend told me). This is quite a big difference.
My understanding is that the public universities in California will ignore freshman year as @Gumbymom has stated. Universities in Canada will recompute your GPA using their own scale and ignoring your grades from your freshman year of high school. For other universities, your freshman year of high school will matter less than your other years of high school, although details may differ from school to school.
Even at the public high school where we live there is a very significant step up academically compared to middle school. Some students are taken aback. This is not all that unusual. Some students have a similar reaction when they arrive at university, particularly for the top ranked schools. I might have actually had an advantage that there was something in high school that I found difficult, so that when I arrived at a highly ranked university I unlike some other students at least had some experience knowing what to do in a difficult class.
Now that you know what to expect, I think that you should plan to step up your effort quite a bit and see how you do next year. You still have a long time to go before you are sending in college applications and you have a lot of time to show your abilities.
Have you seen a copy of your HS transcript? My kid’s transcript had several GPAs including an overall and a 10-11.
Depending on the application and target school, different grades are included regardless of how your HS calculates.
So even if your HS calculates your GPA using one methodology, colleges may calculate it differently.
Agree with other posters, if a CA resident. 10-11 are used in GPA calculation when applying to UCs bad CSUs.
Right, they look at the transcript, see the courses, rigor, and grades. Depending on the college/tier, adcoms don’t need to recalculate gpa, they see the letter grades. Gpa is a high school calculation, some have all sorts of oddness. Top colleges dont admit just based on gpa the hs states.
But you want the right college targets for you. Look at your own strengths and weaknesses. You may not end up going for the ferociously competitive colleges.
If your high school says they don’t count freshman year in your GPA, you can take them at their word. The weighted and unweighted GPAs they report to colleges will just be from your last three years.
As others mentioned, if your school is in CA, this may be to bring things in line with the CA public colleges. It’s really up to each high school, though, and there are HSs outside of CA that don’t count freshman year either.
As other posters have mentioned, some private and OOS colleges may indeed add that freshman year back in as they have their own method of calculating GPA. This allows them to compare apples to apples when looking at students from different schools (one school may count gym or drivers ed in GPA, another won’t).
Do your best work. Show an upward grade trend with increasing rigor, and you’ll be fine.
Your transcript will include a cumulative GPA form grade 10 forward, So the school is not lying to you. However, your grade 9 courses and grades appear on the transcript. As others have said, how each college interprets the transcript is up to each college. The fact that your school does not use grade 9 grades as part of GPA does not mean that a college will ignore them - they won’t. Many will place more importance on later years’grades and/or upward trend.
That said, a 3.1 is low for that school, so your goal for this coming year is to improve that GPA in order to get access to honors/advanced courses the following year to further help your GPA. Good luck
Ask to see your transcript as your highschool sends it to colleges. They are generally different from what you get.
And yes, if the highschool shows grades for freshman year, some colleges will recompile the gpa instead of taking the numbers the highschool gives. That would put you on equal footing with most everyone else who has to have their freshman year gpa included. That’s why the most selective colleges tend to recalculate the gpa— to give as level a playing field to everyone. You should not get an advantage because your school calculates gpa different way from most other schools. Why should you to anyone else? A school that uses 5.0 or 6.0 system looks a lot better than 4.0 unless converted. That’s why the top schools tend to convert.