<p>So I was wondering, do colleges only look at your weighted average or do they look at both weighted and unweighted average? Because I know I have a 4.something for my weighted but my unweighted is pretty bad. And if they do look at unweighted averages, is it a big part in their decision whether to accept you?</p>
<p>Different schools calculate GPA differently, especially weighted GPA, so for the most part colleges aren’t just going to look at your numerical GPA with no context.
They look at your transcript to see what classes you took and what grades you got, and they look at your counselor recommendation to see if your schedule was “most demanding,” and they look at your class rank to see how you performed in comparison to to other people at your school. Some schools have harsher grading than others.
Larger, less holistic schools are often less thorough with this, but they’re usually not as selective anyway. </p>
<p>Your weighted GPA is always going to be a bigger number than your unweighted GPA, but it’s on a different scale. If your unweighted GPA is bad, that indicates you’ve gotten a lot of non-A grades, and that will hurt you at very selective colleges, unless your school is unusually demanding and your class rank is high.</p>
<p>I have a 2.7 UW and a 2.6 W. Nothing is really working out for me at my current school, but despite the fact that we might move to another town a half hour away, my parents may still find a way to keep me in a school where I’m unhappy, lacking confidence and where the people are less than enjoyable.</p>
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<p>In Freshman year, I had a 3.92 weighted and 3.79 unweighted. In Sophomore year, I currently have a 4.2 weighted and 3.62 unweighted.</p>
<p>@halcyonheather What exactly does holistic mean? I always see you say that, but I never really understood.</p>
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<p>If a college has holistic admissions (probably most of the selective American colleges people talk about on here), it means they consider things other than just your grades and test scores. They try to look at an applicant’s whole life/person as it’s presented in the application (grades, scores, awards, interviews, essays, ECs, recommendations, talents, special circumstances, etc.), rather than just looking at numbers and admitting people by formula.</p>