<p>How do various weighting systems in high schools work? I recently saw a post by someone who said they had a 3.1 unweighted and 4.5 weighted GPA. In our school, any honors or AP class is weighted up by .6, so with a 3.1 GPA, the absolute highest you could get if you had all honors and AP classes (which is of course impossible) is a 3.7. I'm not getting how other systems work. Can anyone share their weighting system with me if it is not like ours?</p>
<p>For my high school, which I believe is very similar to others, 1 point is added to each Honors or AP class (given that the grade is not a D or an F). I don’t know how a 3.1 could go to a 4.5 through weighted classes…that’s odd.</p>
<p>In our school system, all honors classes get +1 point and all AP’s get +2 points</p>
<p>Public: +.5 for honors +1 for AP</p>
<p>therefore, A in honors=4.5, A in AP=5.0</p>
<p>You can check a billion threads and see a billion different systems. Never seen ours anywhere else though.</p>
<p>Slowed down classes are weighted 1.0
Normal classes (Regent’s or college prep) weighted 1.05 (by multiplying not adding)
Honors and AP are weighted the same, both 1.1</p>
<p>So assuming a 3.1 is a 86 - the highest possible weighted grade one could have (and it wouldn’t be possible because they don’t have honors sections for most 9th grade classes) is 94.6 which I suppose translates to a 4.0.</p>
<p>I’ve never let it worry me too much, because if I thought about it I’d get irritated.</p>
<p>We don’t have “honors” classes and our GPAs are unweighted but in AP classes the grade is changed dependent on the score on the AP test…3 and better bumps the grade up (C to B-, B+ to A- etc. up to an A=4.0 but no higher) 1s and 2s (if anyone has gotten them) cause the grade to stay the same so its a wierd little thing, much like heavily weighting a final exam. I’ve seen my son’s GPA calculated all over the place depending on whoever is doing the calculating…</p>
<p>Public high school:
Slower classes have a GPA out of 4. (A=4, A- = 3.7, B+ = 3.4, B=3, etc.)
College prep classes have a GPA out of 5. (A=5, A- = 4.7, B+ = 4.4, B=4, etc.)
Honors/AP classes have a GPA out of 6. (A=6, A- =5.7, etc.)</p>
<p>Similar to mathmom’s school, there are few (in fact, only 1) honors class for freshmen. The highest weighted grade that is possible is 5.6 or so.</p>
<p>Our public school uses a 100 pt. scale. Honors classes are weighted 1.1, and pre-AP and AP are weighted by 1.2. Because of the pre-AP designation, freshmen can have most of their academic classes weighted 1.2. (All the GT kids automatically get slotted into the pre-AP classes. Others have to petition.)</p>
<p>The transcript only shows the weighted GPA, which is used for rank.</p>
<p>By the way, the school also has a very strict policy about how grades are calculated from numerical scores in the grade book, again all on 100 pt. scale. There is no subjectivity.</p>
<p>I’ve been at a loss at how to convert my son’s GPA to 4.0 in order to compare stats. Depending on what method I use, it’s anywhere from 3.0 to 4.0. The GC uses a special scale to convert to 4.0 when requested on an application, but I don’t know what it is.</p>
<p>Like mathmom, I too get irritated just thinking about the different ways schools calculate and use GPA, hoping that our method does not disadvantage my son any more than his grades support.</p>
<p>“I’ve been at a loss at how to convert my son’s GPA to 4.0 in order to compare stats”</p>
<p>mom2sons: as an alumni interviewer, I asked this of my admissions office two years ago because it confused me also; and I didn’t know how to advise my interviewees…at this public U, I was told that they do not convert the averages to a 4.0 scale, but rather examine the school profile to figure out what the numbers mean based on a particular HS; in other words, evaluate on the context of the individual HS…</p>
<p>Doesn’t help you in terms of comparing stats that are released; if you have naviance from your HS you are better off comparing based on that (not an exact science either though based on factors not revealed, but that’s a whole other story)…</p>
<p>What I do know is that schools RARELY recalculate numerical averages while they do tend to recalculate gpa’s that are based on the 4.0 model; this does work to the advantage of schools and students that weight their 100 scales. This was a huge bump at Umichigan in the past (for example) but no longer since they are no longer recalculating GPA’s.</p>
<p>Our GCs have said
that many colleges unweight and take apart the grades to look at them…and recalculate
and
Some colleges only give GPA credit to academic courses,
and not things like newspaper, journals, yearbook, gym, indust arts etc
…so only math, science, history, english, and foreign langauges get calculated
and
rigor of work, is it a reg, honors, or AP?? is considered based on whats available at that hs.
There isn’t just one way to do it.</p>
<p>^I’m counting on colleges to notice that my son’s B+ in academic classes puts him in the top 6% of the class. But we’ll see!</p>
<p>Our HS:
A 100 in a regular class is 4.0.
A 100 in a pre-AP class is 5.0
A 100 in an AP class is 5.25</p>
<p>I’m a very slow learner, but I’ve finally figured out (too late for two of my three kids) that it is best to take as many pre-APs as possible, rather than APs…the AP version is a lot harder, but the point bump is minimal. </p>
<p>Many schools recalculate GPAs but you pretty much have to come out and ask - it’s not typicaly on the web site or anything.</p>
<p>Here are three schools to which Son was admitted, all very similar schools in the same part of the country:
A: looked at weighted GPA for admission and unweighted for merit aide
B: looked at unweighted GPA only
C: looked at weighted GPA only</p>
<p>Missypie</p>
<p>You make a great point, and one I have made to the advisors at our hs…
Our S attends a rigours private school
but the reg classes are way too easy for him
Honors are alot more work and prob 1/3 of the kids take some of those
APs are MUCH more work and much faster paced. Almost all of the students get 5s and very high scores on SATii.</p>
<p>That said, our S took all Honors but 2 for fresh and soph yr…and is in all APs and one Honors Jr yr. …the bump doesn’t always seem worth it … there are kids who are getting more As in much easier classes…and S has more B+s in the honors and APs but S is getting an amazing education </p>
<p>We hope rigor will prevail as thats what AdComms say…Fingers crossed…MIT AdCom said they would be happier to see a Bin an AP than an A in a lesser course.</p>
<p>Grade weighting for admissions to a state school is determined by state law, so whatever system your high school uses the state school will use the mandated system. And colleges will generally weight grades how they want, not how they’re presented. They may also only consider core academic courses, if they want. </p>
<p>Example: it’s typical for a state school to have a policy about admissions to an honors program. This is codified because it’s a state school. The rules list the weighted and unweighted acceptable levels.</p>
<p>Lergnom: huh? “Grade weighting for admissions to a state school is determined by state law”??</p>
<p>I am an alumni admissions interviewer for a SUNY school; there is NO way that SUNY weighting is determined by state law…and they do not reweight in state or OOS</p>
<p>and I also know for a fact that Indiana@ Bloomington doesn’t have a mandated system of re-weighting; they take them how they are presented…</p>
<p>At my D’s school, an AP or honors grade is weighted 0.5 points higher than a college prep course grade. So an A in a standard college prep class is 4.0, and an A in an honors or AP class is 4.5. In my D’s experience, the honors and AP classes are significantly more difficult.</p>
<p>At our local high school a student receives 3 extra points – on a 100-point scale – for taking a “Regents class” (i.e. a class for which a NYS Regents examination will be given). Honors classes, AP classes and classes for which a college credit can be granted from either the local community college or SUNY Albany are given 5 extra points. A lot of honors-caliber students game the ranking system by choosing to take basic Regents level classes since the APs, etc. only give them 2 additional points.</p>
<p>Of course, none of this really matters outside of ranking as most colleges will recalculate the weighted GPA using THEIR system or will look at unweighted grades only.</p>
<p>The proliferation of grading systems and weighting is really becoming an issue for college admissions committees (it has been called a new form of grade inflation). It is making GPA a much less relevant factor for secondary school performance. Ideally, colleges will use the combination of class rank and secondary school reputation as the best measure of secondary school performance. With many high schools moving away from providing class rank, colleges have little choice but to rely even more heavily on the standardized tests (something they see as a negative development).</p>