<p>We just found out that my son's school weights AP classes by 1.1 so I'm guessing that means if he gets an 80 it becomes an 88, if he gets a 90 it becomes a 99, etc.</p>
<p>Two questions:</p>
<p>1) If he gets more than a 91 does he get more than 100? Does 92 become 101, etc.?</p>
<p>2) Is this the grade that gets written down on the report card? If not, how does it work? Do colleges see both grades? If so which one do they pay attention to? Do all high schools handle this the same way? Do all colleges handle it the same way? </p>
<p>OK, I know that's more than two questions, but you get the point.</p>
<ol>
<li>Yes, usually. That's why you find all those kids with 4.2 averages.</li>
<li>In my experience, no. The weighted grade is usually used only to calculate the GPA and resulting class rank. There is only one grade on the report card. Sometimes colleges see both weighted and unweighted GPAs. Schools seem to differ in which one they pay attention to. HSs handle it in different ways. Colleges handle it in different ways. </li>
</ol>
<p>Some colleges recalculate the GPA, taking off the weighting. Some do not.</p>
<p>The big question is does NOT weighting penalize students who choose to challenge themselves by taking honors and AP courses in which they might not get As or Bs, and the answer IMHO is an unequivocal yes.</p>
<p>depends on your school. Our HS prints three grades on the transcript: overall uw, overall w (by UC-approved honors courses), and academic w (excludes PE, aid, study hall, etc).</p>
<p>That's the way it works at our school. So older son ended up with a weighted average of 102.something. In our school it is the unweighted grade that is on the report card and the transcript. The weighted GPA and the class rank are listed separately. So when my kid tells me is 88 is really a 96, I tell him it still looks like a B+ on his transcript and he should work harder. It does make a difference because your class rank is pretty important information to the colleges - so it's good to have weighting for the GPA. We're in NY - public school and grades are reported on a 100 scale - except of course the weighted GPA which goes up to about 107 realistically.</p>
<p>Our HS and public U's use unweighted grades- HS averages all classes, U's only academic ones. Others assign different weights to Honors and AP classes. Colleges will often refigure gpa's because of all the different ways grades can be reported. Each HS will report how they do grades. Don't worry about this- you can't change your system and colleges know how to deal with all of the systems to evaluate different schools' methods (one reason for them to pick the courses to use inthe gpa and do their own math). Do tell your child to learn the material and therefore earn the best grades he can (our school system only gives A, B, C...some smart students- usually boys- only do the A- work knowing it will still be an A, not A+ work ). It would have been nice if schools would give points for each course, with added points for Honors/AP et al to determine class rank- son's would have been much higher as he took more courses than most as well as the most rigorous. But that is ancient history and elite colleges could easily looked at transcripts and noticed the differences (they would not have seen grades that always matched his knowledge base, such as in courses where homework was graded- 100% on tests can be offset by 0's on homework).</p>
<p><<depends on="" your="" school.="" our="" hs="" prints="" three="" grades="" the="" transcript:="" overall="" uw,="" w="" (by="" uc-approved="" honors="" courses),="" and="" academic="" (excludes="" pe,="" aid,="" study="" hall,="" etc).="">></depends></p>
<p>It sounds as if you are saying that your HS prints three <em>GPAs</em> not three grades. Is that correct?</p>
<p>You really need to pay attention to both weighted and unweighted sets of grades. In the course of visiting three colleges over the summer we found this out:</p>
<p>College A: Looks at weighted average for admission and unweighted for merit aid.</p>
<p>College B: Looks at unweighted average for all purposes.</p>
<p>College C: Looks at weighted average for all purposes.</p>
<p>These are small LACs within a 5 hours radius of each other. You'd have no clue of the above from reading their web sites. We only found this out from campus visits.</p>
<p>yes consolation, three gpa's on transcript is correct.</p>
<p>Most colleges will recalculate the weighted GPAs because there is no standard way that high schools use to weight courses. The OP's school multiplies by 1.1. My kids' high school adds 5 points. The high school my wife teaches at adds from 5 to 10 points depending upon the AP course. Comparing weighted GPAs from high school to high school is virtually impossible as there are countless variations as to how they are computed.</p>
<p>hudsonvalley is right. Our high school weights the GPA by adding .5 to the 4.0 scale for an honors class, and 1.0 for an AP class. So the maximum value for an A in an Honors class is 4.5, and for an A in AP it's 5.0 Other schools add 1.0 for honors and AP.</p>
<p>But for ranking purposes, our school uses a complete different system, where an A in a college prep class is a 12, an A in honors is 15, and an A in AP is 16.5. They use this for class ranks and for admittance to NHS. But here's the kicker - a description of NHS says it requires a B+ GPA, or a minimum of 12.0. But 12 represents an A in a college prep class or a B in an honors class..... </p>
<p>It would be really nice if someone would standardize all this....</p>
<p>^ But there's really no way to standardize because there's no objective way to measure the rigor of the curriculum, the level of the competition, and the degree of grade inflation/deflation from school to school. For that reason, most colleges I'm familiar with use unweighted grades to calculate GPA; evaluate class rank (if any) as a factor in its own right, separate from GPA; evaluate the number of AP and honors classes taken relative to the number of such classes available (so as not to penalize students from schools that offer few or no AP or honors classes); and attempt to assess the rigor of the school's curriculum. Weighing all those factors should give a pretty good indication of how well a particular applicant did in HS, and I think offers a clearer view than trying to compare weighted GPAs.</p>