<p>Also, no weight is given to Advanced/AP courses.
I am taking 4 APs this year and may end up with some A-s.
Do you guys think that colleges will understand why my GPA is less than a 4.0 even if I never receive anything below a 90 in a class?
I really want a 4.0+ to be competitive for scholarships, admissions, and other programs but I feel like my school's GPA makes this impossible, as I am sure that many students at schools with a regular GPA scale who get 90-100 all get 4.0, whereas if I got 92% in my classes I would have a 3.66 <------- Most important sentence to read</p>
<p>Also, when most people on this site say they have a "3.95" or 3.93" GPA, does that mean they got a B at some point? My understanding was that most schools do not have an A- on their GPA scale.
Thanks.</p>
<p>“I really want a 4.0+ to be competitive for scholarships, admissions, and other programs but I feel like my school’s GPA makes this impossible, as I am sure that many students at schools with a regular GPA scale who get 90-100 all get 4.0, whereas if I got 92% in my classes I would have a 3.66” </p>
<p>The important thing is breathe and relax. Your GPA scale is not wacky, except perhaps for the 4.33. You need to realize that most colleges will look at your unweighted GPA or will reweight to their scale; they will not evaluate students on the basis of GPA scales that are all over the board.</p>
<p>Your guidance counselor will submit a report to colleges that explains your school’s grading system, and colleges understand that there are many different systems.</p>
<p>That said, your school’s method isn’t particularly unusual. Most schools give pluses and minuses, and typically assign them numbers of .3 and .7. The most unusual thing I see about your school is that they give A pluses. That’s fairly uncommon.</p>
<p>No worries. Every HS submits a school profile which describes its grading system, levels of classes available etc. along with your transcript Therefore your transcript is read in its proper context. And many colleges even recalculate GPAs according to their own parameters (ex. academic classes, weighted the same way etc.). And your HS GPA system seems to be pretty standard and easy to understand – many HS give both pluses and minuses.</p>
<p>As an aside, my kids HS did not weight and it was not an issue at all in terms of their college admission or getting merit aid. </p>
<p>FWIW: Who knows how most people on CC are calculating their GPA. My guess is that many of them are using the information they’ve personally calculated or their high school has calculated. Unfortunately, many colleges recalculate a student’s GPA using only the core courses of math, english, science, social studies and foreign language while disregarding easier classes like chorus, theater, art, music, dance, gym and health. Other colleges disregard pluses and minuses after a letter grade, while still other colleges completely disregard a student’s GPA. Most colleges are not forthcoming about how they calculate a student’s GPA, so student’s are left in the dark. As this article suggests, you should ask colleges on your list how they calculate a student’s GPA: <a href=“Why Colleges Scoff At Your Kid's GPA - WSJ”>http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB105899458688282900</a></p>