- Elite colleges will not accept you if you are not taking rigorous courses. You do not need a 4.0 by any means to go to one of the top colleges, a 3.8+ UW is probably most usual though.
- There are plenty of students who have amazing grades and test scores, what makes your difference is your EC's and Essays when the elite colleges coming down to choose which one of the three or four perfect SAT's they want to accept.
- Doing all that to go to the college of your dream isn't worth it. Just try to become a bright person and success will follow you more than if you try to game the system so you can get into an elite college. What college you go to will not be what earns you your job.
- No idea. The less selective universities are less concerned if your taking the most rigorous courses, but those are not the ones your worried about. The elite colleges care if your not challenging yourself.
Unless, most schools are artificially inflating their unweighted GPA, it’s just not possible for this many students to take most rigorous load and make a 97 in every single course for four years. How come they never get a challenging teacher or a challenging course?
I’m guessing most schools are giving 4.0 for a score of 90+? In her school, only 97+ gets an unweighted 4.0. You get 96 and boom you are out of the perfect ball game. I hope colleges notice that.
Our HS does not artificially inflate unweighted GPAs. Students have earned straight A+'s taking the most rigorous courses with very challenging teachers.
Seems like you are very worried- please stop or you will make yourself crazy!
Is it possible for some ultra super uber gifted students? Absolutely. Is it possible for as many students as you hear about to score perfect on every single AP subject, every single semester for 4 years? I don’t think so.
If it is true then either curriculum or teachers aren’t very challenging or 4.0 doesn’t need 97+. I can see most smart kids getting 4.0 if they mostly take regular and honors classes with few easy APs and few tough APs in subjects they are strong in, not with full AP or HL IB courses.
In her school, if one says perfect unweighted then people can pretty much tell which courses, which EC’s and which teachers were avoided to engineer this outcome. None of the top kids play that game and this is one of the top magnet school in whole nation so not possible that they don’t have students of that calibure that are graduating mediocre schools with perfect GPAs.
I’m just arguing it to make my point. I’m not worried as I looked at Naviance and all of their top 4% kids get into top 20 schools every year without perfect unweighted while lots of perfect unweighted GPAs and even valedictorians from many schools get rejected.
At my kids’ high school a A, A-, A+ is a 4, a B, B-, B+ is a 3 and so on. That’s the way it was when I was in high school, and the way it was when I was in college. I didn’t know other schools had different scales until I came to CC.
That said, at their high school, maybe one kid a year graduates with an unweighted 4.0 out of 700 kids in a class. My kid had more than one class where she got a B and then got a 5 on the AP test.
What sort of school gives an A only for 97+? It’s traditionally 93+ or 90+, here. So, are you certain? That’s usually the A+ cutoff.
Let’snot fuss if your school is tougher than others. I’ve seen many, many transcripts and none making A= 97+. Is this a US school? And what’s your familiarity with the range of rigor of US hs?
And yes, lots of kids are knocking themselves out to challenge themselves, stretch, and succeed, and have ECs,
It is a public school right here in USA and yes they do need 97 for 4.0. I know it’s ludicrous but it is what it is. As far as range of rigor goes, I’m only familiar with few districts in my state but it gives one an idea of how curriculum/rigor for same course, GPA scale, GPA weight and ranking varies from one district to another.
You are correct about 90 or 93 being normal qualifying criteria for 4.0. Unfortunately, our school takes too much pride in making things difficult for their students. However, they do prep them well for rigor of good colleges.
There’s usually(?) a school report submitted to colleges that will give things like the grading scale, so colleges will understand how hard it is to get an A.
Right. They do send school statistics along with student transcripts.
If your child is interested in sports or arts typically they just take those courses pass/fail once the pe or art requirements are fulfilled. Lots of high achieving kids are involved in sports, but they don’t need to drag down their gpa’s with 4 years of unweighted grades in those classes.
I agree completely but her school considers sports and fine arts courses as 4.0 regular and counts it towards weighted GPA. Art is only fine art with 5.0 AP so it’s a good one but not everyone wants to do art or Statistics or APES. My D is a music and sports lover.
There is no national standard when it comes to GPA.
Yes, it’s a 4.0 scale, that’s why after their p.e. requirement is met they can take the class pass/fail, it doesn’t count toward their gpa. My daughter has spent 4 years on varsity dance team, she only took grades for the first two years.
97+ for 4.0 is ridiculous. That said, it doesn’t matter since your kid will be judged vs other students in her school and her course rigor. The most important thing to remember is the application needs a “story”. Courses, extracurriculars, and tone/essay should all tell a story about your kid and who she is. If the story is she sat there studying the courses she needed to look good the theme is study, study, study for the sake of grades not genuine intellectual curiosity, then it’s a bad story. They will take a 3.8 GPA/34 ACT with a great story over a 4.0/36 grade gunner any day at the top 10 schools.
Our HS had an unweighted perfect GPA of 4.33, not 4.0. Our school also goes up to A+ and then we add .33 to honors and .66 to AP classes. An unweighted 4.0 is an A and an unweighted 4.33 is an A+. I believe an A- was 90-92, an A was 93-95 and an A+ was 96-100. My kids are no longer there so I forgot the details and it sounds very confusing right now lol. They are now going away from grades such as 4.3, 4.4 etc and are doing it by number - 97, 99, 104, etc. Your HS will send the school profile to every college and it will explain how grading is done at your particular HS. Every HS does it differently and colleges know this.
Our HS will have one student ( maybe two but not often) who will get an A+ in every single AP and honors class they take- starting with HS honors that begin in 8th grade. Some earn straight A+'s in regular classes and some earn all A+'s taking all honors ( no AP).
When the time comes…your school counselor will be sending a school profile sheet to,each college your child applies to. This will explain their grading scale, and also will give things like ranges of GPAs for the class.
Also, some colleges don’t use the HS computed GPA at all. They recalculate using the college’s own formula so that the GPA playing field is level.
What year in HS is your student?
Poster @thumper1 Junior year.
At this point, you have her GPA at least through mid year junior year. Right now…work with what you have.
Weighted GPA is 4.53 out of 5.0 so pretty good considering D’s utter disregard for GPA engineering.
Her GPA is unlikely to change much at this point as far as admissions is concerned. As others have said many colleges don’t actually look at the GPA or rank and instead, look at course rigor and grades in the courses they consider relevant.
Our school reported grades to the colleges on a 100 point scale (110 theoretically for the WGPA - though that wasn’t actually possible since there were a number of required non-honors classes.) I never knew or worried too much about how that got translated into a 4.0 scale.
Realistically, her odds of getting into an Ivy are only slightly better than mine for hitting a jackpot.