<p>Do colleges see the final course grades on the transcript, or each individual marking period grade + midterms/finals?</p>
<p>Also, is GPA based on final course grades or each individual grade per marking period?</p>
<p>They see whatever is on your transcript.</p>
<p>So this is different for all schools? Isn't it unfair for student's whose schools send a transcript that shows marking period grades as opposed to just final grades?</p>
<p>It's your school's decision. It's not necessarily unfair unless you're completely inconsistent.</p>
<p>When I was in HS, our transcript just showed the year end grade. My son's hs transcript shows every marking period. Since the year end is the average of your grades during the year it shouldn't be terribly different (although it makes it hard to hide that occasional C!)</p>
<p>As for GPA, it's up to each college how they want to calculate it for admissions, and up to each hs how they want to calculate it for class rank (assuming your hs ranks). Again, since the year-end is an average of all the marking periods, a GPA based on year end grades should be extremely close to one using every marking period.</p>
<p>While they would be close there really is an issue here. Including every quarter grade for a mid-year report would benefit those who get straight As every quarter as opposed to someone who got an A 1st B 2nd A midterm, while you could argue that this is fair when attempting to compare students from different schools it really isn't. Furthermore it also hurts students who's teachers give extremely hard exams. For example, at my school a teacher gave AP questions as the mid-term exam but not truly understanding the nature of the AP exam graded it on a straight one hundred point scale my GF got a 58% on the exam (at least a 3 on the AP exam) and now has an E on her mid-year report, this seriously calls into question her quarter grades which were both As. It jusn't fair to give colleges, which are already competitive enough, another factor that while appearing acurate could be rather arbitrary.</p>
<p>What I just said for the most part only really applies for seniors sending mid-year grades, and not all schools do it this way. Most schools will calculate GPA at the end of your junior year based upon the year grades for each class, not the quarter grades, i'm sure there are exceptions to this though</p>