UC GPA vs. "regular" GPA vs. Weighted GPA

Applying to College
21

Could these be the reasons?

  1. Historically, in California, there were school districts that had 10-12th grade high schools, with 9th grade being part of middle or junior high school. This is now rare.
  2. Using 10-11th grades to calculate GPA does effectively capture upward or downward trends (relative to 9th) in the GPA.
22

^ Could be. But does it matter what it is? What matter is that they intentionally excluded 9th from UC GPA, so they probably won’t give a lot of weight into grades received during 9th even though they can see it.

What classes were taken during 9th should still matter though for a-g.

23

How does it capture trends relative to 9th grade? A kid who got straight A’s in 9th vs a kid who got straight C’s in 9th could have exactly the same UC GPA.

Both my kids have downward trends. How do you avoid it if you get straight A’s in 9th? Unless you are perfect or take easier classes in 10 and 11 than in 9. My kids are not perfect, and they took harder classes.

24

Basically by suggesting that the more recent grades are more important than the older 9th grade ones, it rewards upward trends and penalizes downward trends. So if both of the above students earned straight B grades in 10th-11th grades, both would be recalculated to 3.0 for UC purposes, even though a 9th-11th GPA would be 3.33 for the downward trending student and 2.66 for the upward trending student.