I am a senior and I applied to several of the top schools in my state and I was wondering, do colleges want to see steady improvement in your GPA or do they just use your overall and don’t take growth into consideration. I am asking this because after my sophomore year in high school, I switched to the public school in my county and my GPA rose by .6 points (2.9 to 3.5) in one year because my old school did not offer honors or dual enrollment classes and now I am taking both of those.
GPA is more important, but upward trend can tip at some schools.
It sounds like a lot of your improvement is because of weighting. Many colleges unweighted/reweight GPA.
It depends on the colleges, what they want to see.
If it is not a constant 4.0, an upward trend is better when you are looking at the same GPA.