Do Colleges factor in all four years of your GPA, or do they usually disregard freshman year grades? When Colleges report average GPA’s of applicants’ is it from all 4 years?
Some colleges care about 9th grade, and some don’t. The latest grades that will be used in the admissions decision are the 1st term of Senior year.
I doubt colleges will spend the time/resources to update all the admittees’ admissions file with a recalculated GPA that includes last term of Senior year.
It depends on the college. And some schools recalculate applicants’ HS GPAs according to their own parameters Iex. academic classes only, not weighted etc.).
I hate to say tell you this answer but it’s very true for this question… “it depends on the college”.
@university89 @happy1 where could I look it up for a specific college. Would it be on their website?
Generally speaking colleges will care far more about your un-weighted GPA than your weighted GPA. They will probably exclude PE and possibly Music classes. The UC schools have different criteria. The colleges won’t generally tell you how they calculate your GPA for the purposes of admissions decisions. While some colleges exclude freshman year I think it’s more common that they consider all 3 years for ED and your senior year first semester grades for RD. You may see published GPAs for colleges and there is a spot for this on the common data set but it’s not always possible to know whether it’s a weighted or un-weighted
No. You can ask them, although they probably won’t tell you.
It depends on the college. UC’s for example don’t look at freshman year. Other colleges do.
For example, what do Ivies look at?
I believe Ivies look at freshman year.
@TheDidactic Would they value these 2 applicants the same overall?
Applicant 1: Freshman year: 3.9 Sophomore year: 3.8 Junior: 3.8 1st semester Senior year: 3.7
Applicant 2: Freshman year: 3.5 Sophomore year: 3.7 Junior year:4.0 1st semester Senior year: 4.0
I know that GPA isn’t everything, but I don’t want them to look at my App and reject it just because of a small GPA difference.
No, they would value Applicant 2 more because of the upward trend. Colleges (all of them) love to see upward trends and improvements. Applicant 1 started good but ended up slipping down so it could be a slight turnoff to colleges.
@TheDidactic Thanks so much for your replies! I’m just worried because I wasn’t motivated to attend a top College in my Freshman and Sophomore years, so I received “average” grades and didn’t think anything of it. Yet here I am compared to students who have had their parents prepping them for Ivies for their whole life.
As long as you get that upward trend and get yourself in gear, you’ll be fine.