Official Transcript Surprises

Paying for College
1

I always thought I knew how GPAs were calculated at my son’s school. I assumed that they were using the core grades for the GPA, but they don’t. They are counting everything, including gym, art, music, etc. The official transcript doesn’t even provide a methodology on how they calculate. Another weird thing is that our district throws the 8th grade transcript in there. I’m assuming because he took honors geometry in 8th grade. Only the math had credits applied, but the grade counted towards the HS GPA.

I would think that a college would need to take this transcript and come up with their own weighted/unweighted GPA - hopefully they have a way to import from Parchment/Infinite Campus to do it automatically. I recalcuated his weighted and unweighted GPA manually and was pleasantly surprised to find it was actually a bit higher, because his lack of music and art talent and Bs in those classes brought his GPA down slightly. Not enough to make a huge difference.

For anyone who is looking at scholarships, you may want to ask the school what grades they are including in the GPA - those gym, art and music classes can inflate it. Some of the schools do say that the GPA is in the core classes only, and some it’s specific core classes and electives. I’d assumed incorrectly about our high school, and this might help someone else.

2

I would not fret about this. @elodyCOH when your kiddo applies to colleges, a school Profile will be sent. This doesn’t explain the formula used…but it does tell about your kid’s senior class and the school.

Many smaller colleges recalculate the GPA anyway using whatever THEY feel is appropriate.

The colleges will see your kiddo’s grades in each course…and will go from there.

There are TONS of different ways to calculate HS GPA…both weighted and unweighted. Colleges understand this.

3

Your child’s school transcript includes every course taken through high school. Some schools don’t calculate PE in the the calculation (because in many cases it artificially inflate the GPA). Otherwise, if your child gets a credit for the course, it is included in the transcript (the same thing happens in college).

If your child took an accelerated course in geometry in middle school and received high school credit, the grade gets calculated and is part of the high school record.

The more selective the school, the more likely they are going to use the unweighted GPA because there is already an expectation that they are taking the most demanding courses the high school offers. They will most likely remove PE from the GPA calculation because it artificially inflates the GPA.