<p>So, I’m really interested in UA. It seems like a generally great school, plus the great financial aid! But in terms of the automatic presidential scholarship I’m unsure of if I qualify for it. The main reason for this is that in Australia high schools don’t do GPA, at all. We have a 7 point GPA scale for university, but that’s a whole other story. So, I’ve seen that grades from years 9-11 are counted for scholarship purposes. To be honest, I don’t remember much about my grades in 9th grade, but I think they were average (probably some As, Bs and maybe one or two Cs), I’ll probably have a dig around later today to see if i can find my transcript. In tenth grade I began a Pre-IB program, and IB proper in the final term of 10th grade. For tenth grade, the grades I received were as follows (keep in mind my subjects from 9th to 10th grade are different, but I continued to do basically the same subjects in 11th grade):</p>
<p>(Also, here we get “term” grades, which are like half semesters, so I’m just including my semester marks):</p>
<p>Semester 1- Year 10</p>
<p>English- B
Environmental Systems and Societies- A
Film Studies- B
French- B
Math- A
Theatre Arts- C</p>
<p>Semester 2- Year 10</p>
<p>English- C
Environmental Systems and Societies- A
Film Studies- B
French- A
Math- A
Theatre Arts- A</p>
<p>From a 3rd person perspective, what do you think these grades will be translated as by UA admissions? Also, do they just count core subjects (I’m guessing in this case Math and English, but in 9th grade I had social sciences and history as well I believe)?</p>
<p>NOTE: Generally AP grades will be on a different scale, where an A is 5 points, B is 4 points, etc.</p>
<p>Assign a point value to each of your course for the semester and divide by the number of courses.</p>
<p>Semester 1 of Year 10 your GPA is 3.17
Semester 2 of Year 10 your GPA is 3.50
Your GPA for Year 10 as a whole is 3.33</p>
<p>I’m not familiar with the IB program at all, so I’m not sure if that could affect your GPA by weighting grades like AP courses. Thus, the GPA I’ve given you may not be accurate, but this is how it is generally computed for high school. Your GPA at a university will be slightly more complex as you will have to consider that all classes are not equal in credit hours. I hope this helped somewhat. </p>
<p>Also, are you able to take the ACT in Australia? I believe there is a growing trend of more and more students taking the ACT over the SAT, and I know recently the SAT changed its tests in a big way to make it more like the ACT. It would be a great idea to take both the ACT and SAT because not only will it give you more opportunities to meet the necessary score, but you may find yourself more comfortable taking one over the other.</p>
<p>Hi Mattio,
Yep I’ve gone through and calculated my GPA but I wasn’t sure if it was accurate. If IB courses are weighted that would be a big help, but I’m not sure if they are.</p>
<p>I’m not sure which one I’ll take but I think you can take both here. I’m leaning toward SAT because they seem to be a bit more lax in terms of restrictions on calculators.</p>
<p>It’s been a long time since I’ve taken either SAT or ACT, but I remember them both being pretty lax on calculators. I believe it was almost any calculator except for TI-89 and something else, and obviously no cell phone calculators. I found the math section on the ACT to have more difficult content but the questions were often straight-forward (I got a 36), whereas the SAT seemed to have slightly trickier word problems. However, you may find that the SAT is easier, goodluck! </p>
