I am confused with the weighted vs unweighted GPA. My son’s school gives .025 additional to the GPA if you receive an "A’ in an AP class. Right now he has a 4.050 due to having A’s in two AP classes. I assuming that 4.050 would be his weighted GPA while 4.00 would be his unweighted GPA.
Since weighting method differ, weighted GPA comparisons are only valid when it is known that all are weighted the same way.
Every school does things differently, but that would be an unusual way of calculating a weighted GPA. More usual would be something like this:
Reg. English - 4.0
Reg Math - 4.0
AP History - 4.025
AP Science - 4.025
Take the average: 4+4+4.025+4.025= 17/4= 4.0125 WGPA
On the other hand since .025 is such a tiny extra weighting they probably [do just add it on to the regular GPA and save themselves from actually having to do the math problem.
Weighted GPAs are most an issue within a high school and are generally used to determine class ranks. Many colleges will reweight the grades using their own system, or they will just look at unweighted grades and course rigor without resorting to equations at all.
Like mathmom said…schools do it differently (and colleges KNOW this). Our HS has 3 levels…Reg, Honors, AP. (another local HS actually has 4 levels they use, with one sort of lower than Reg…)
At our school for example, an A+ in a full-yr Reg course =4.0; Honors=4.83; AP=5.33. (for standard GPA calculation, these would each be 4.0). Standard GPA includes all grades, without weighting, averaged based on total #credits. Weighted GPA also includes all grades, with weighted grades where appropriate.
(our school has made the spreadsheet available that does all the calculations for you…you put in each class, level, #credits, final grade…and presto!) Also used primarily for ranking purposes…not even sure they report the wGPA to colleges on transcript.
Unweighted takes away any added points for honors, AP et al. Schools weight grades differently as you can see above. Son’s HS did not weight grades- his class rank could have been higher I guess. Colleges will recalculate the gpa their own way to be able to compare grades from one HS to another.
OP- you are correct in your interpretation.