<p>My school doesn't use UW for rankings, but colleges only look at UW for admissions.... I dont think that's fair. My UW is 4.05/4.3 and my W is 4.15/4.5. Wouldn't they want to look at W, which factors in how hard your classes are? </p>
<p>On our transcripts, W isn't even on there. Explanation please??</p>
<p>I think your GPA is not going to be the issue that keeps out of a college regardless of whether it uses weighted or weighted GPA. Not sure where you got your info but it is incorrect. What colleges actually do varies with some relying on unweighted, some using unweighted and then applying their own weighting system to get a weighted GPA, some just accepting weighted grades, some relying on class rank not GPA, some using only grades after freshman year whether they use weighted or unweighted, and probably even some other variations. Of course, you should be aware that what most colleges which rely on GPA use are grades in college prep course – foreign language, math, English, social studies, and lab science – and thus in determining your own GPA you need to eliminate all your A’s in Health, PE, vocational studies and others that are not college prep courses.</p>
<p>Thanks ^ health/gym don’t go into our GPAs, but language does (Latin is unleveled so it brings everyone down).
But I didn’t know about how the colleges might make their own based on your grades, etc… So my W might be different when a college calculates it vs my school’s?</p>
<p>Weighting systems vary by school (mine, for example, adds one point for honors and two for IB or AP). That’s the reason colleges don’t use weighted GPA; rather, they use the transcript, which is a combination of course rigor and UW GPA. Your course rigor willbe taken into account, but not numerically.</p>
<p>ohh i see! thanks glassesarechic
this is all so confusing… i can’t wait til it’s over (and i get accepted to my fav school of course)</p>
<p>By considering rank, they do consider WGPA, and far more than GPA at that.</p>
<p>i know they consider more than GPA… i just had a GPA question.</p>
<p>A weighted GPA cannot be compared consistently school-to-school and is thus meaningless in and of itself – I read that several students in one county had 7.5+ GPAs; surely that doesn’t make them smarter than students in the rest of the country!</p>
<p>However, class rank (which is usually based on weighted GPA) is readily comparable across all schools which provide a rank. Even there, colleges have wised up: One question often seen is “how many shared the rank?” because some high schools rank everyone with over a weighted 4.0 as #1, sometimes many dozens of students.</p>
<p>i heard about multiple valedictorians^^
thanks!</p>
<p>There is one set of colleges, the University of California campuses, which are very transparent about exactly what they do to calculate your GPA for admission. That is because they publish the details of the method used on their UC Pathways site see [University</a> of California - Applying for fall 2012?](<a href=“http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/admissions/freshman/applying-fall-2012/index.html]University”>http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/admissions/freshman/applying-fall-2012/index.html) and [University</a> of California - 2012 admissions index](<a href=“http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/admissions/freshman/applying-fall-2012/2012-admissions-index/index.html]University”>http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/admissions/freshman/applying-fall-2012/2012-admissions-index/index.html)</p>
<p>For the UCs, your college prep courses mentioned above count but they also count art and music. Your freshman grades are ignored. All that matters is sophomore and junior grades because they make decisions without any senior grades. They use your unweighted sophomore and junior grades and drop all +'s and -'s. For AP and honors courses you then get an extra point per semester added, meaning an A which equals 4 becomes a 5, but you can add no more 8 total additonal points, i.e., if you take a lot of APs and honors you will get no weighting for some of them.</p>
<p>Thus, from just looking at the complexity of what the UCs do, you best not start make any assumptions as to what colleges actually do in using weighted or unweighted grades. There is no simple answer because colleges vary substantially as to what they actually do.</p>
<p>thanks for that helpful information… but i wasn’t making assumptions, i was wrongly informed by my HS</p>