The University of Michigan is no longer recalculating GPA!

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Michigan
1

<p>I decided to start this thread so everyone, not only those in the early response applicants thread, will know about U of M's new GPA policy. Thanks to tjrdbsjung for posting the link on the early response applicants thread.</p>

<p>U-M</a> no longer recalculating gpa</p>

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[quote]
U-M no longer Recalculating GPA: After careful consideration, the University of Michigan will no longer recalculate grade point averages for freshman and transfer applicants to the University. For the evaluation of our entire Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall 2010 applicant pools, we will utilize the cumulative grade point average posted on the student’s high school transcript, for freshman applicants, or college transcript, for transfer applicants. This policy applies to all freshman and transfer applications processed by the Office of Undergraduate Admissions.</p>

<p>The University remains committed to utilizing an individualized and holistic review process. The strength of the student’s individual curriculum challenge, grade trend, anticipated number of academic courses completed by the student’s anticipated enrollment date at the University and class rank [(if provided) for freshman applicants only] will remain the primary focus of the academic assessment of a student’s evaluation process.

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[quote]

Why the change in policy?</p>

<p>The University determined that the margin of difference in the grade point average recalculation is not significant enough to continue to sustain the effort. The time that can be saved by eliminating this step can be better utilized to focus on the review of applications and recruitment of students.</p>

<p>(Freshman Only) Will the grade point average be computed using six semesters (through junior year) or include seventh semester grades if they are available?</p>

<p>The grade point average will include all course work that is posted on the high school transcript at the time the student makes application.</p>

<p>I’ve already applied. How is my file being evaluated.</p>

<p>We have identified the files that have already been processed and are evaluating the applications utilizing the cumulative grade point average posted to the high school record before a final decision will be processed.</p>

<p>(Freshman only) Will we use the weighted or unweighted grade point average?</p>

<p>We will utilize the cumulative weighted grade point average if it is provided on the transcript.

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<p>The following information is info I received from my adviser, that he got from Ann Arbor. I don't think this is on their web site.</p>

<p>
[quote]

Why the elimination of recalculation?
[ul]
[<em>] Several University of Michigan studies (conducted in 2006 and 2009) found that the difference in the recalculated UM gpa is approximately .08-.11 below the reported school gpa. The findings confirmed that the numbers were not significantly different enough to continue to recalculate.
[</em>] The holistic review process places emphasis on the gpa, curriculum and grade trend within the context of the student's high school environment and therefore further diminished any concerns regarding ending the process.
[li] Will eliminate confusing among students, parents, and counselors regarding what gpa we use in our process.[/li][/ul]</p>

<p>Why now?
[ul]
[<em>]The provost approved the change earlier this week.
[</em>]As the University works to be as fiscally responsible as we can, this adjustment will allow us to process files more efficient and allow us to focus our efforts on the application evaluation and recruitment of students.
[li]We are reentering the data in our system for all students whose files have already been received at this time.[/li][/ul]

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<p>So I'm guessing that they're just using whatever GPA your school gives them, since they only judge in the context of your school.</p>

<p>What are your guys' thoughts on the change? How will it affect you? It doesn't matter to me since my UM GPA = my school GPA. I'm hoping they'll release decisions faster though!</p>

2

<p>I’m a little upset because I will no longer have a 4.0. It won’t change much (my HS GPA is 3.973) so it’s not a big deal. I can’t really see this saving them that much time and I’m honestly a bit surprised that they would make a change like this during the application reviewing process instead of in the late spring or summer.</p>

3

<p>I read that they would utilize weighted GPAs if provided on the transcript, which doesn’t seem fair to students whose schools don’t put a weighted GPA, but I really don’t know much about these things.</p>

4

<p>That’s not good! My school doesn’t weight and A= 4.0 A-=3.7 and on!
I will be going down from a 3.83 to about a 3.72
Will this affect me a lot?</p>

5

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<p>and</p>

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<p>U of M says:</p>

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<p>so you’ll only be compared to others in your school. If your GPA is a 3.5 and that’s one of the highest in your school, you’ll be fine. If you go to a school that heavily weights GPA and your GPA is a 4.0 while others have 5.0’s, then you won’t be in great shape, and that previous guy with the 3.5 will have a better chance. That’s how I think it works, I hope that made sense.</p>

6

<p>This is quite possibly the stupidest thing I have ever seen out of the U of M admissions office. They claimed that before they recalculated the GPA to eliminate discrepancies in weighting systems and put all of their applicants on a level playing field.</p>

<p>That implies that some applicants whose schools weight GPA will now look more competitive than before, and unless application readers are really interrogating each transcript, applicants whose schools don’t weight could stand a disadvantage.</p>

<p>And this all comes during the middle of their application cycle, not during the summer before apps have been submitted.</p>

<p>Poorly, poorly done on the part of the UMich admissions team.</p>

7

<p>This is the same method all of the ivy league schools use, i don’t know why people are upset.</p>

8

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And that makes it all right?</p>

9

<p>Yes! That just moved me from a 3.8 to just over a 4.5. My cumulative GPA has been 4.4-4.6 every semester. This will help me a lot because I had a few B+s last year; my harder schedule brought that W GPA up though, and my cumulative stayed the same. Nice work yosup.</p>

10

<p>Guys, I know I said it in another thread, but the admissions officer know it was FRESHMAN year! You just have to relax! They’ll take it into consideration, knowing that its a rough year for pretty much everyone.</p>

11

<p>I know my chances of admission are still low but at least my GPA will be higher, and will represent more accurately my performance in school more than the previous UM GPA I’ve calculated.</p>

12

<p>its a holistic process anyway, they are not gonna have a cutoff like they did before the AA case, so it doesn’t really matter if your gpa is 3.9 or recalculated 3.7, if they are gonna look at your curriculum and rank. this isn’t a big deal, michigan was one of the few schools that actually still re-calculated the gpa, everybody else already use what’s there. it’s not a purely numbers system, chill.</p>

<p>but you know what this means is next year, Michigan’s average GPA will be 4.0 or over.</p>

13

<p>They should keep recalculating grades IMO. It’s dumb that their incoming average GPA is going to sky rocket because of weighted grades. I know people that have their GPA on a 6.0 scale, whereas ours was only a 4.0 scale. How are they going to calculate in a GPA like that on a normal 4.0 scale? </p>

<p>On a side note, are they still going to not count freshmen grades or how are they going to handle that whole situation?</p>

14

<p>It says cumulative from 9th-11th.</p>

15

<p>Hmmmm… this decision is really confusing on face value, especially using the weighted system vs. unweighted. I’m not exactly sure how this will affect chances to those who applied this year. And I think it’s not really fair. Some students worked differently in high school knowing that that A- would be a 4.0 and a B+ would be a 3.0. I guess it’s not really fair to them. I think the university should have made the announcement and said that they were going to change the policy in a year or two, but not immediately and certainly not for the Fall 2010 Applicant pool. It puts several students at a disadvantage. Maybe one reason is that they wanted to bring the average admitted GPA up up up.</p>

16

<p>Wow…just wow…a ton of kids from our grade deflated high school (but normal weighting in honors and AP classes) would really have benefitted from this over the past few years…we have had a bunch of top 10%/3.7UM GPA kids not accepted with 4.1-4.2 weighted GPAs…guess they can’t ask for a "do-over’ though…</p>

<p>certainly helps the kid who has B+ in honors and AP’s (who basically got screwed by UMich in the past)</p>

<p>edit: just one more thought; what about the kids who DIDN"T apply EA to UMich because of the old system (thought they didn’t have a chance) and now they change this with one week to EA deadline? ya think they could have announced this a little earlier? typical</p>

17

<p>This is odd. We attended an info session & tour in August and they outlined in detail how they would be recalculating GPA. Anyone know the effective date of this change??</p>

18

<p>It’s already in effect.</p>

19

<p>College counselor here called; put into effect this past Monday…</p>

20

<p>My friend is a transfer student and has W’s on his transcript that he’s retaken, but I believe admissions said that they still count against him.</p>