<p>I've heard that colleges recalculate your gpa using only the 5 main academic areas and don't include semester electives, gym etc. Does this hold true for most colleges?</p>
<p>This is likely only done at highly selective colleges (Ivies and sub-Ivies). They give more course value (not sure how they weight them) to AP and similar courses, and don’t count courses like gym, chorus, tech ed, etc. when they look at your GPA. These same colleges compare your GPA and class rank to your school type, too, so if you go to a very competitive school where several kids get into Ivies and sub-Ivies, you may get a little more leeway on class rank than if you went to a school where very few kids get into highly selective colleges.</p>
<p>There are a few posters that know more about Yale and Harvard admissions, so if they comment they can explain more.</p>
<p>Okay so that process doesn’t occur at less selective colleges?</p>
<p>It depends on the college.</p>
<p>Some schools recalculate GPAs by their own methods (e.g. UC and CSU). Others just holistically look at the transcript to see if you took a high number of the available honors and AP courses and got mostly or all A grades. Some look primarily or exclusively at class rank (e.g. University of Texas, Austin).</p>
<p>Most colleges (other than the very highly competitive ones) just look at the GPA on the transcript and the difficulty of courses. </p>
<p>Actually, many colleges consider both standardized test scores and difficulty of courses more important than the GPA.</p>
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<p>Sub-Ivies? Really? The Ivy League is an athletic conference. Just because a highly selective, highly prestigious school isn’t in the Ivy League doesn’t mean it’s inferior.</p>
<p>As for the OP’s question, it really depends on each individual school. Some recalculate your GPA, but others don’t. Regardless of the school, though, they’re going to look at your transcript, and they’ll obviously place more weight on academic classes. Most schools also place the most weight on the most recent semesters and the least weight on your freshman year. Regardless of whether they do this mathematically, it’s almost certainly happening.</p>
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<p>Than the number that is your GPA? Yes. The number is useless. But most don’t consider SAT/ACT to be more important than your transcript (which includes course rigor, grades, and class rank), as your transcript covers four years of academic work rather than just a single testing session on a Saturday morning.</p>
<p>@RedSeven- Agreed. I can’t stand the fact that many people will judge your entire high school career on some 3 hour test. 4 hour? However long it is.</p>
<p>Redseven, sorry if the term ‘sub-ivies’ was offensive in some way. What is another way to call Middlebury, Bowdoin, Haverford, etc that are highly selective but are not considered Ivy league? I went to a large state school 100’s of years ago, so in using this term I’m just re-using what I hear my neighbors use, and their kids attend ‘sub-ivies’ even though they also had the stats for the Ivies. Also, the OP was asking a very generic question … clearly in the beginning the college process, so my answer was intended to give general feedback.</p>
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<p>[Little</a> Ivies - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ivies]Little”>Little Ivies - Wikipedia)</p>