Do colleges only look at your unweighted and weighted GPAs calculated after junior year or do they look at your GPA calculated with senior year grades?
They look at the classes and grades on your transcript. In reality they care little about GPA as that’s just a simple representation of your transcript. So, they care about the classes and grades that are on your transcript (minus some like PE or others for most universities).
Usually when you apply, you’ll need to send in mid term grades of your senior year. If you’re accepted, then they’ll care about the second half of your senior grades (although they won’t be as strict).
@gdlt234 So they see the cumulative GPA through second quarter, for me, of senior year? My school will report my XY GPA that is calculated through my second quarter of senior year?
They will see all high school grades on your transcript and the cumulative GPA. Whether unweighted or weighted, they wii recalculate your GPA accordingly. All colleges require applicants to send in their midyear transcript of their senior year, and yes, this will include your cumulative GPA. Those grades are very important, so no slacking off is the advice for all seniors. Once admitted, your college requires your last semester’s transcript as well, just to make sure you didn’t get too severe a case of senioritis.
Colleges see whatever is on the transcript that is sent, which is usually end of semester grades for all high school semesters completed when transcript is sent. If weighted, they will still see real grades on transcript for each course because weighting is something done to caclulate GPA not to tell you actiual grade in a course.
The exception to the above is that some colleges do not have you send transcripts for purpose of initially determining admission but instead you self report all your grades in the application (the UCs and UIUC are examples of colleges that do that). If final transcript sent after being admitted disagrees with list given, admission decison will be withdrawn.
As to what grades are used to determine admission, it varies. Majority of colleges including most public universities actually use only grades through junior year to determine admission and do not want a mid-year senior grade report before admisison decision is made. Large minority (including your private high ranks) require your mid-year senior grades to be submitted after you have applied and before admission decision is made. However, even those colleges, if they have early action or early decision programs where you can get a decision early such as in December, use grades through junior year to make those decisions, although a small number actually request mid first semester senior grades for early action or early decision. Also, there are some colleges that do not use freshman grades to make admisison decisions.
In any event, you cannot blow off senior year regardless of grades used to initially decide admission because all colleges reserve the right to withdraw your admission if the transcript they get in June or July shows poor performance in senior year, and yes, colleges have in fact withdrawn admissions because of that.
As to the use of weighted or unweighted grades, it again depends on college. A lot of high ranks use unweighted and then apply their own weighting system to come up with a GPA. Others just accept the weighted GPA’s given but know weighting systems differ and thus do not assume a GPA from one high school is necessarily equivalent to the same GPA from another.,The UCs have a one-off system which uses weighted grades only for up to 8 total semester courses and unweighted for all other courses even if you took a lot more honors and APs than the 8 total semester courses. In any event, particularly for any colleges that are really selective in accepting candidates, your transcript will be reviewed for courses taken and grades in them and reviewed to see if you took challenging honors and AP courses offerred by the high school and graded well in those, e.g., if your transcript shows 1 AP course and high school offered dozens, that would be points against you at many higher ranked colleges. One thing that is mostly uniform is that colleges tend to ignore courses and grades in non-college prep courses, e,.g., all those A’s you get in health, PE, shop, word processing, and other vocational courses mean nothing.
Most schools use uwGPA while UCs use wGPA. Nevertheless, the school may recalculate your GPA the way they want. Some may count only the 4 cores or 5 cores. Some may drop freshmen grades. Even for wGPA UC use, it is likely not the same value as on your transcript.
From the colleges I know:
- Stanford looks at your unweighted cumulative GPA - yes, freshman year is included - and your transcript
- UC's look at your UC GPA - which is a weighted GPA (grades 10 & 11) of the UC approved classes you've taken - which means PE and other electives that aren't UC approved are not on there.
DO MOST ELITE COLLEGES COUNT FIRST SEMESTER OF GRADES IN THE GPA CALCULATION?
WE DON’T KNOW.
They certainly will look at the classes you’ve chosen for your 7th semester. And if the transcript happens to show a slew of Bs and Cs during the first marking period – I’m sure it won’t escape notice. Why should they blind themselves to something very relevant?
How would YOU view an applicant who submits a 3.98 GPA for six semesters but in the current transcript with lots of APs/IB classes is filled with Bs and Cs as opposed to another applicant who has the same 9th - 11th grade GPA but also all As and one B in their first semester Senior year?
You don’t know if schools normally send students cumulative GPAs through first semester of senior year or the cumulative GPA at the end of junior year to RD schools?
They do see both cumulative GPAs through to the end of first semester of senior year. When you apply in the fall of senior year, the transcript will only have your cumulative GPA for the first 6 semesters of high school. The 7th semester transcript with your cumulative GPA at that stage, is the midyear transcript your high school sends out at the end of the 7th semester to each school you applied to. Even if you were accepted early, the college will see what your cumulative GPA is at the end of 7th semester.