Hey guys. I am finishing my sophomore year in high school and my parents are moving when this school year ends. I will be transferring to a new school and I was wondering what would happen with my cumulative GPA.
Will I start from a clean slate my junior year or will my grades carry over somehow?
Bump
Great question! I wish I had asked your question when I was in the identical situation.
Don’t worry about it. Most colleges will upload your courses and grades into their own calculation.
That’s how they can compare one kid with a 3.5 out of 4.0 GPA that doesn’t award +1 for pre-IB, AP, IB courses, with a high school that does (exact same kid may have a 4.4), with a third high school that won’t award +1 for pre-IB, but does so for AP, IB courses (perhaps same kid may have 4.2), with another high school that ranks the same kid 9.3 out of 10.0 GPA on a completely different system.
My kids transferred from a high school in one state to another state, then back to their first high school. In both cases, the high school willy-nilly decided what the transferred weighted GPA would be. You might be able to argue a little, but don’t fret unless you are in the running for valedictorian.
For the first move, the school docked their IB credits, because ‘we don’t have IB’ so don’t want to penalize our current students. Very silly argument, especially, because this school was easier than the previous school. If my eldest was in the running for Valedictorian it would have been painful, but it didn’t matter when my kids applied to college.
College admissions try their best to level the playing field between the different school systems and award the different courses from different schools with their own internal point system.
From my experience, yes, your GPA will include courses taken from both schools, but the calculation doesn’t matter when it comes time for you to apply to college.
This is really a 2 part question. For your new HS, how it calculates your GPA is totally up to them. Some only include grades from the new HS, even if the old grades are on your new transcript; others include grades from the old HS. For college admissions, they will consider grades from all high schools and will recalculate GPA as needed.
@skieurope So in the case of the new HS removing my past GPA and giving me a new one, it won’t matter because colleges will look at my past GPA too?
Correct.
My daughter moved schools after her sophomore year. The first high school was the US News #1 STEM public magnet school with a 0-100 grading system. We moved internationally for work, so the second was a German International School with an IB program that has a 0-7 grading system. We never knew what her 4.0 scale GPA was. Colleges admitted her anyway and gave her merit scholarships. The only glitch we had was our State Public U that had an automated system for scholarships based on self-reported data. An email to admissions cleared that up and she was also