On the common app. Thanks!
High schools often “weight” or add an extra factor in for honors and/or AP classes. In my district, for instance, each class has a full grade added to it. If you earn a B in such a course, the weighted grade would be an A. Only if you have never taken an honors or AP class or if your school doesn’t weight them, will you have only one GPA.
Great that is what I thought!
@techmom99, thanks so much for explaining that! My daughter’s high school programmed her for an AP science class this year, even though she had already completed all the science credits she needs for graduation and didn’t want another science class. The new principal has been pushing for stronger and more rigorous academic requirements, so she can’t get out of it. It’s not a horrible class, but we’ve been worried that it will hurt her GPA, because she’ll probably get a B in it instead of an A. So it’s comforting to hear that (hopefully!!!) the school will “weight” it in the way you described and consider it a higher grade in calculating GPA, just because it’s an AP class which is harder than a regular class.
What you describe does make a lot of sense: if they don’t weight the grades, it would penalize kids for taking more challenging classes.
My wife is a college counselor and I’ll ask her to weigh in on this. The above is correct; weighted vs. non-weighted refers to the addition or not of AP classes as I understand it. Colleges can look at transcripts and see if you’ve taken AP classes and again my understanding is they can take into account the level of classes when considering an applicant.
But the other thing you need to be aware of is whether a college only looks at core classes when considering the GPA of an applicant. The core classes would include those courses in language arts, history, math, science that are required to graduate high school. If, for example, you have a high GPA but it is inflated by classes in non-core courses such as choir then the GPA they look at for admissions decisions will be lower. So you need to ask the college counselor or guidance counselor at your school what the student’s GPA is for core vs. non-core classes and then look at what the specific college requirements are and what the consider for the application.
Be aware that some/many colleges, especially the farther they are from the “top” echelon, only consider unweighted GPA across all classes (no weighting, no “core only”) when calculating numbers for merit scholarships. This is because the merit scholarship is, in essence, a tuition discount that they are offering because they want the student’s “stat” line to improve their numbers for rankings, and they calculate their GPA numbers for rankings as unweighted, total GPA (this is the GPA number that gets put into their Common Data Set submission each year and those are the numbers that the ranking groups like US News and World Report use). So, unfortunately, for those schools, getting a series of “B’s” in AP classes actually can hurt your merit scholarship numbers somewhat. One or two “B’s” probably won’t make that much difference, but, something like five or six will.
This is different than the metrics that may be applied for admission, which may be based on weighted, core GPA, especially at more academically-competitive schools.
It would probably not be a great idea to plan your high school curriculum around merit scholarship numbers from non-flagship state schools or lower-tier privates (the ones most likely to offer large merit aid amounts based on unweighted, total GPA), but it is interesting to note that many of the better MT programs are located at these types of schools.
Just one more complexity that MT kids and parents face in the process.
Knowing that she was dedicated to majoring in MT in college, and knowing that NYU and Northwestern were not going to be on her list, my d decided to opt out of pre-AP Precalculus her Junior year and took “Advanced Quantitative Reasoning” (practical math, easy “A”) her Senior year. She also opted out of taking a science credit her senior year. Her counselor argued strenuously against this but it worked out great for her. She had a lot less stress in her last two years of high school than some of her friends who struggled through Precal and senior science and she was still admitted academically with large merit scholarships to schools like TCU, Baylor, Illinois Wesleyan, Florida State, etc. despite “only” having four years of math and science (d had high school math and science credits from eighth grade and her high school pushed the kids with good grades to complete math through Calculus and take five science credits).
Hmm…I don’t mind them using the unweighted AP grade IF it means they’ll be calculating the GPA using ALL the classes, not just core. 'Cause my daughter also has classes in Acting, Theater History, and Voice & Movement, so if we include those high grades, it’ll easily make up for the AP Science one.
And yeah, merit aid is my big concern. My daughter is only interested in conservatories (with few required gen eds), so she won’t need AP science to get accepted - the high school is just making her take it.
My daughter is in her 3rd high school (military family). Only one of her schools offered weighted classes. Should we still include the couple of weighted classes she had that school year? Should we just list her grades on a 4.0 scale and not fool with the weighted classes?
Schools usually recalculate GPA according to their own formulas. Her transcript will be all they need. Also, depending on the school, they may or not allow you to fufill math/science requirements with courses taken in middle school. That gets into a whole of area of transcript and prerequisite hell.
Thanks @Walker1194!