Just wondering how much a upward trend matters when applying to colleges
9th: 2.5
10th: 3.5
11th: 3.9
Total: 3.3
Also, my weighted GPA is a whole point higher at 4.3 so does that also matter when applying to schools?
It may matter at some schools which trust the weighted GPA calculated by your high school for admission or scholarship purposes.
However, many schools realize that different high schools weight GPA differently, so (if they want to consider a weighted GPA) they may recalculate it by their own method.