Specifically, are folks only taking into account core subjects – i.e., math, history, language, science, English - or are folks including other classes, like music, art, band, theatre, P.E., etc.?
My kids’ transcripts have 4 GPA’s.
W in academic only
W in all
U in academic only
U in all
Thanks, Vicki. Very interesting. Appreciate the comment.
Even if there are inconsistencies at the margins like health and PE, unweighted GPA is much less inconsistent than weighted GPA with no indication of the weighting system, which appears to be what most posters give.
Art and music are academic courses.
I typically ask posters to calculate unweighted GPA, on a 4 point scale, in core courses (the 5 you mention) only. IMO adding in PE and electives artificially inflates GPAs, and many colleges ignore those classes (whether or not the recalculate GPA). FWIW my kids’ basic transcript shows W GPA, which includes only core courses in the calculations.
@ucbalumnus and @Mwfan1921 – Thank you both. It dawned on me that when people throw up the GPA on this board that there doesn’t seem to be consistency on the treatment of grades for non-core classes.
My kids’ high school doesn’t list a GPA for a unweighted or unweighted for just core classes.
@Darcy – So it just computes a single GPA for all classes (whether weighted or not)?
No, as mentioned above. But the reality is that for the high-performing students, the difference between the academic GPA and the total GPA is meaningless, at least for the hypothetical “what if” questions here. Certainly it’s more consistent than the weighted GPA, which is pretty meaningless to us here who are viewing it out of context.
Additionally, some schools calculate GPA differently; At some schools a 92 is an A, at others it’s an A-,and at others it’s a B+
I think another factor is which 4.0 scale? A = 90 -100? or A+/A/A- with different value ranges? At DD’s HS, a 92.49 was a B+ and only a 3.3.
Agreed there is no consistency @hopper2019. Many who post their weighted GPAs are in for a surprise come transcript evaluation time. Also agree with @ucbalumnus that art and music can be academic courses, but their treatment is inconsistent from hs to hs as well.
IMO the 5 core areas are the most appropriate set of courses to start with, plus art and music where it is a clear focus for the student, but not for a student with, say, one semester of a glass blowing or music theory course.
The inconsistency of GPA’s applies not only to posters on CC, but to all high schools, colleges and scholarships as well.
No @Hopper2019 - there’s two gpas a weighted gpa for all classes and an unweighted gpa for all classes. There is no gpa calculation for “core” classes.
The reality is, when you see GPA’s listed on “chance me” threads, nobody really knows what they mean unless they are accompanied by a class rank, or at least a percentile (top 5%, top 10% etc …). I saw a post recently where a 97 average barely placed the poster in the top 10% of the class. At my kid’s school, an unweighted 97 would make you valedictorian most years.
Thank you all for your comments. Thought maybe I was just unaware of a CC convention on GPA. I guess GPA really is in the eye of the beholder 
At our school gym and a few other classes (freshman chorus) don’t count towards gpa but do get posted on transcripts sent to colleges. I count all academic classes even if they aren’t core classes such as honors business and technology classes. Online there is a weighed and non weighed gpa.
Not saying every university should do this the same way, but the UC system has a standardized way of calculating GPA (the UC GPA) that makes it easier to compare across high schools. (In their system, PE doesn’t count but arts and music do. Only 10th and 11th grade are included. And bonus points for ‘honors’ classes are limited - for the most part it’s only true AP courses that count with just a few exceptions, and there is a limit to how many you can claim. Also, there’s no difference between an A and an A- as far as numeric calculation (or a B, B+, B-, etc)).
In any case, yes, there’s a big variation between high schools and one person’s weighted 4.8 might not be any stronger in actuality than another student’s weighted 4.1.
South Carolina also has a standardized HS GPA calculation, but it can really exaggerate weighted GPAs: https://ed.sc.gov/districts-schools/state-accountability/uniform-grading-policy/uniform-grading-policy-2-5-18/
@TheBigChef it depends on what kind of school a student attends, too. If it’s a highly selective private or public magnet high school a kid in the 50th %ile for GPA might be just as strong as a 5% student from another school. At my daughter’s old school, there are kids attending Ivies from the top quintile in terms of rank. The school actually stopped calculating class rank because it was so meaningless. They only make known the top 10 kids at the end. Everyone graduates having zilch idea of their ranking.
Nope