Maybe I’m missing something obvious, but why don’t all high schools use a standard formula for weighted gpa, rather than unweighted? At my school, only UW gpa is reported and UW gpa is used in admissions graphs. I just don’t see how UW gpa is an accurate report on academic performance. Do colleges really make any judgements based on UW gpa? My High school college adviser keeps telling me I can get into some colleges but not others, and yet she bases this on UW gpa. It just doesn’t make sense to me.
That is all they look at. For rigor they judge based on your schedule. Don’t worry, it works out that colleges see both.
She is basing her advice on UW bc that is what the schools use and report prior admissions stats on.
Colleges with holistic admissions readings will look at your course selection and perhaps your counselor report where s/he indicates whether you chose the “most demanding” courses, in addition to your grades.
Others may recalculate their own weighted and/or unweighted GPA so that they do not compare non-standardized weighted GPAs from different high schools.
You’re saying you don’t understand how an average of the grades you’ve gotten is an accurate report of academic performance?
I imagine your guidance counselor is taking into account your course rigor as well as you unweighted GPA.
Many HS do not weight GPA and different HS weigh GPA differently. Also many colleges recalculate GPA according to their own desires (ex. academic classes only etc.)
A 3.5 all normal is different from a 3.5 all honors / AP
Some high schools don’t weight, or don’t offer many AP or honors courses. So weighted can’t be apples to apples. And college look at your actual transcript, and what your GC says about the rigor of your schedule.
Unweighted standardizes the GPA as a data point. There’s too much variation in how weighted GPAs are calculated.
I think it helps in determine class rank. Schools that give higher scores for honors AP and IB courses use as a means for comparing their own students. It may mean little to the universities, the transcripts will give them most of information they need.
Not all high schools offer the same number of advanced courses. So even if they adopted the same weighing system, it would not be a fair way to evaluate all students. By looking at the uwGPA and the course rigor separately, the adcom can evaluate all students in the context of the applicants’ high school. Some colleges (like UC) would recalculate your GPA either weighted or unweighted anyway, so they really don’t care about the wGPA system your high school uses.
High schools that weight use the wGPA’s to calculate class rank. Colleges ask about class rank and release stats on the ranks of their enrolled students. They care about class rank because it gives them a sense of how a student did in relation to other students in the same school. But because different high school weight differently and some don’t weight at all, uwGPA’s, all recalculated by the college on the same scale, along with the rigor of the classes taken, are a way that colleges can compare students from various schools. Yes, both these comparisons, within a high school and across high schools, are imperfect and yes the adcoms know that.
Funny. When I started all this, I couldn’t understand the use of weighted GPA. It seems all the parents usually want to hear what kids’ UW GPA is in order to help them. Kids seem to usually like to just give the W GPA when asking for help.
The variation in weighting systems means that weighted GPA given without context (i.e. what the weighting system is) tends to be meaningless. I.e. is a 4.4 weighted GPA based on a 4.0 unweighted GPA or a 3.0 unweighted GPA?
Many high schools do not even rank students as there is no fair way. This is getting more and more popular.
Because each school system is run by a different organization. And there isn’t necessarily a common way of producing an UW GPA either (4.0, %ages, or out of a number other than 4.0).
Unweighted GPA provides an indication of how bad your grades are if not camouflaged by the weighting.
Let us assume one has 25 classes - all weighted with an extra point.
The person gets 16 As, 5Bs and 4Cs. for a UW of 3.48 but add a point and they have 4.48 which is a nice GPA.
However, the fact that there are 5Bs and 4Cs in the mix is not noticeable since 4.48 weighted GPA is quite good.
My kid’s school does not weight GPAs and does not rank. The GC indicates the rigor of the coursework and that also can be discerned by the school’s summary annual report.
Agree with @texaspg that weighted GPA can conceal Bs and Cs earned in more challenging classes. That is one reason why many colleges and universities recalculate GPA, using their own weighting system.