<p>Son's high school does not rank but some of the colleges he will apply to say they will. So I'm a little fuzzy on how this works or is calculated.</p>
<p>For simplicity sake let's say a student has four classes. He gets two As and two Bs and that gives him a 3.5 for that semester. </p>
<p>Now let's say that those two Bs are in AP classes. What would his weighted GPA be?</p>
<p>Also, how does a college view it if a student has a 4.0 until taking APs and then gets lower grades in the APs?</p>
<p>I have done some college consulting, and have talked with other admissions officers. I have yet to find a single college that accepts a high school’s weighted GPA. Some of them weight the GPAs themselves. Others simply take the GPA and look at the strength of the curriculum taken. Others do none of the above. </p>
<p>If a student has a 4.0 one year, and a 3.2 the next, they see it as a decline in performance. And it will worry them, with or without APs.</p>
<p>There are different methods of weighting. Some schools weight by a whole point; others by fractions of a point. Some weight both honors and AP/IB courses, others weight only AP/IB courses, and still others weight honors courses but weight AP/IB courses more.</p>
<p>You can see why colleges would need to recalculate weighted GPAs for consistency.</p>
<p>Mini has a good point about colleges being concerned about any decline in performance. However, they would also be concerned if a student who was ready to take APs (that is, had completed the prerequisites) and was at a high school that offered them did not include any in his schedule. In this sort of situation, the student would be considered to not have taken the most rigorous curriculum available.</p>
<p>Anecdotally it seems, plenty of people at our school get into top 20 schools with lower level classes (with good GPAs) and many times they get into better schools than the kids that tough it out in the higher level classes and AP classes but lower GPAs. Our school does not rank nor do weighted GPA.</p>
<p>Edit to my original post: I said son’s HS does not “rank.” I meant to say does not “weight.” Listen to what I mean not my I say! Ha, ha!</p>
<p>At my D’s HS, they give an extra point for honors and AP classes. So 2 As in regular classes would be worth 4.0 each. Two Bs in AP classes would also be worth 4.0. So that semester’s weighted GPA would be 4.0. Unweighted would be 3.5. They would report both on the transcript.</p>
<p>IF the school does not weigh gpa, then college is not going to do anything. this is the reason why your school should have a well written profile to let colleges know what is being offered. In addition, if your son is taking the most rigorous courses offered, the GC will check off the boxes to the questions asking about the strength of his grades in comparison to others int he class. </p>
<p>Mini is right especially if your son is looking at more selective schools, the weighting is going to be taken off because there will already be an expectation that the student is taking the most rigorous courses that the school offers.</p>