<p>Do the ivies and other top schools consider a candidate's weighted or unweighted GPA? I'm wondering about the student who attends a very competitive private high school and finishes with a 3.9 weighted GPA...</p>
<p>I’d like to know as well!</p>
<p>And for that matter, do they recalculate so they can have the core classes only, or do they care about the gpa for every class?</p>
<p>from what ive heard, it really depends. some say princeton only cares about your unweighted gpa, and will thus recalculate your gpa (with only core classes?). My guess is that no one really knows for sure, but if you are in the top 5% of your class, regardless of your gpa, it is enough for the ivys.</p>
<p>I hope that is not true. </p>
<p>You can be in the top 5% of the class by taking non challenging AP classes like History, Psych, languages, GOPO etc and avoiding math and science AP classes. </p>
<p>We are in a school district, where the school weighs AP & ACC & non-ACC classes differently. But all AP classes are weighed the same. So, AP physics (very difficult) or BC Calc (very difficult) is weight equally with AP Art History. So, there is a lot of gaming the system to be in the top 5 or 10% of the class. I hope the colleges recognize the difference between the efforts and interests of different students. A lot of these math & science students gave up a lot of their social life and extra-curriculur activities to be in these classes.</p>
<p>Princeton and other elite colleges care about your transcript: the record of the classes you’ve attempted and how you performed in them. They won’t simply consider weighted GPA, or unweighted, and ignore all the other metrics. And they will consider your record in the context of your environment. They don’t expect a student from the local schools in Hot Springs, Arkansas, to have the same educational experiences or opportunities as a student from Sidwell Friends or Palo Alto HS, but they do want you to have challenged yourself as much as you reasonably could in your environment.</p>
<p>Sent from my DROIDX using CC</p>
<p>well, of course, if at your school the top 5% of the class is made up of students who have easy courses, they will not get into a top school. at my school, however, taking ap courses gives you extra points towards your weighted gpa, which puts those students in ap courses in the top % of the class- and they are the only ones who get into ivy leagues from my school.</p>
<p>Thanks for thoughts on this. What Sikorsky has said makes sense; otherwise, I guess the entire process would be subject to a lot of potential grade/numbers manipulation.</p>