What is the difference between unweighted average and weighted average?

Pre-College Issues High School Life
1

<p>So in my school,
- A+ = 4.3
- A = 4.0
- A- = 3.7
- B+ = 3.3
- B = 3.0
and it continues, while the GPA for AP classes are
- A+ = 5.3
- A = 5.0
- A- = 4.7
and you get the point (it's one higher than the regular number average).</p>

<p>However, I am having a hard time understand the difference between a weighted average and an unweighted average. I asked some of my senior friends but they just told me that weighted average is when you count the AP classes but unweighted average is when you don't. But if that's the case, then why is it that on websites where they ask for unweighted GPA, the highest is a 4.0? </p>

<p>Or is unweighted GPA simply
- any A = 4
- any B = 3
etc?</p>

2

<p>If your course has a GPA that is different than the GPA awarded to a standard class or the standard scale of your school, it is weighted. I believe in most instances, an unweighted GPA is out of a 4.0; unweighted GPAs are easy to recalculate if you’re confused – most schools will recalculate your GPA to be out of 4.0 unless they have their own school specific system (like UCs or UMass). </p>

3

<p>The most common way (from what I’ve seen/experience) of doing weighted and unweighted is to assign A = 4, B = 3 and so on with honors/AP getting 1 bonus point. A lot of high schools end up taking -'s and +'s into account by weighing them differently so that the senior class doesn’t end up with 30 valedictorians (not an exaggeration, <a href=“http://schoolsofthought.blogs.cnn.com/2013/06/06/oregon-high-school-has-29-valedictorians/”>http://schoolsofthought.blogs.cnn.com/2013/06/06/oregon-high-school-has-29-valedictorians/&lt;/a&gt;). </p>

4

<p>Weighted = Both regular and honors/AP classes count in your GPA, but honors/AP classes are worth more points. This is done for class rank purposes within individual high schools so that kids who got straight As in regular classes won’t automatically be ranked higher than kids who got slightly lower grades in more challenging classes. Usually this is on a scale higher than 4.0. </p>

<p>Unweighted = Both regular and honors/AP classes count the same in your GPA. The weight a course is given depends only on the number of credits it was worth. The simplest/most common unweighted scale says A = 4, B = 3, etc. but there can be more complicated ones with plus/minus grades. They don’t have to be on a 4.0 scale either (your school appears to use a 4.3 scale), but you shouldn’t compare two GPAs that are on different scales.</p>