I want to go to a top school. Right now 10th grader in high school. Is UW or W more important? my uw is 3.6 but weighted is 4.5
For college admissions? UW plus rigor, since there is no common rubric used by all HS’s for weighting. Colleges will wither use your UW or will weight according to its own parameters.
For your life in HS? Probably weighted, particularly if your HS ranks.
So at the end of the day, it’s all important.
In most cases, agree with #1, although there seem to be some colleges and scholarship programs (e.g. University of Alabama scholarships for stats) that take the weighted GPA off the high school transcript at face value, despite the inconsistency of weighting methods across high schools.
If you later post here for any college search/selection, admission, or chance topic for yourself, unweighted GPA and description of course selection is far more useful to others who may respond to your questions. Weighted GPA is meaningless unless you describe the weighting system.