<p>My school does not use GPA, but a total average of all my courses. (ex. 90/100) How do I calculate GPA 1-4.0? Do I take my average (which is an 88) and then look for the corresponding GPA on a chart, or do I need to add a number for each class (ex: 4.0+4.0+3.0 then divide by 3) for the latter,I think my average looks a lot better than my GPA 1-4.0 would.</p>
<p>And if my school sends an average with the transcript, will colleges recalculate it into a 1-4.0 GPA?</p>
<p>Some will. Some won’t.</p>
<p>I heard the proportion average/100 = x/4 can get my GPA. Does this work?</p>
<p>Well, that sort of depends on how (and whether) each individual college recalculates, doesn’t it? There’s no one-size-fits-all answer.</p>
<p>I don’t know how colleges do it, but I’d take each individual course grade and convert that using a scale like 90+ = A = 4 points, 80-89 = B = 3 points.</p>
<p>So will colleges recalculate just my academic (English, Math, Science, Foreign Language, Art, Music, History) grades, or also crap grades (I go to a private religious school that has a lot of crap classes that I got C’s and B’s in). And should I drop the +'s and -s amd just count all A’s as 4.0 and all Bs as 3.0?</p>
<p>UPDATE: I just did that and my GPA is a 3.45. My two lowest academic grades are one C and one D, both from my freshman year when I was in an ultra-religious school/racket that taught religious studies and marked it as foreign langauage.</p>
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<p>It’s totally up to each college.</p>
<p>Shouldn’t you just send in your transcript and an explanation about the grading policy.
However, if the application asks for a grade point, give it your best guess and give yourself the benefit of the doubt. You can always explain, if they ask.</p>
<p>Really, you should just send your transcript. When your school sends that, along with the secondary school report, they’ll include a profile that explains the school’s grading system. The colleges will take that information and do with it what they want.</p>
<p>What purpose are you trying to accomplish?</p>
<p>If you are trying to get together a list of colleges, and get a sense of whether you’re in the ballpark to be competitive for admission, you can look at the colleges information and mentally convert it to benchmark it against your own transcript. You can’t really know what they are going to do with your grades, but if you’re just trying to guess whether you are a reasonable prospect for that school, you can guesstimate by doing the conversions a few different ways.</p>
<p>College Board reports out what percent of kids are above 3.75 GPA. They don’t say (and the colleges often don’t, either) whether this is weighted or unweighted–that’s the tricky part.</p>
<p>But if you are looking at colleges where the overwhelming majority have a GPA>3.75, then you should have mostly grades in the 90’s and maybe 1-2/year where your grade was in the 80’s to be competitive there. </p>
<p>The very most competitive schools may or may not include the non-academic courses in their considerations, but it is likely that most competitive applicants probably did well in those as well. Those kids tend to do well across the board. You probably should have nearly every course grade >90 to be very competitive for admission at the most selective schools.</p>
<p>Some schools will tell you on their website how they make the conversions or how they report out the data. You may need to look at their “common data set” to find out. Google will help you find it.</p>
<p>I am thinking of applying to somewhat competitive schools like GWU and NYU. And possibly UC Berkley since they ignore Freshman year.</p>
<p>Both NYU and GWU have been, in recent years, a reasonable target for students with about half B’s and half A’s…obviously, the more A’s, the better. </p>
<p>Admissions get more competitive across the board each year, though.</p>
<p>Thanks. Regarding Berkley: I just calculated my UC GPA, and as long as religious studies is not an “a-g” course, I have a 3.92 GPA (completely unweighted). That is definitely competitive if I get a 30+ on the ACT.</p>
<p>Note: I live in New Jersey, not CA.</p>