<p>I go to a top 10 public school in CA. Will a 3.8 at this school be worth more than a 4.0 at a "normal" high school? </p>
<p>I asked my guidance counselor this question, and she said all GPAs are the same no matter what school you go to. I hope she isn't telling the truth though =0.</p>
<p>answer: yes.</p>
<p>High schools have profiles where they discuss how things are run at your school, what is average, and so on, so admissions can distinguish between the difficulty level of diffferent schools (plus college reps are usually familiar with local hs's if they get a lot of inc students from there). I don't know why your counselor said that.</p>
<p>Good HSs network with the Us their students like to apply to & make them familiar with the caliber of the work & students, which helps them at admissions time. As was said, they also send profiles with your app, to help Us that aren't familiar with your school have a better understanding of its rigor & adjust accordingly.</p>
<p>UCs don't....but they're not that great anyway. I wouldn't bend over backwards for them, even for Berkeley.</p>
<p>Superficially they'll see which classes you took and how "challenging" it is relative to other available classes (i.e. APs vs Honors). However. AP doesn't always mean hard and honors doesn't always mean easy.<br>
My AP calc class was easier than honors geo, alg 2, and precalc. My AP phys class is a lot easier than the h physics class and h chem class i took before. This obviously, the university won't be able to know.</p>
<p>Public colleges tend to focus on the hard numbers and not their context, though it may have some influence over their decisions. Private schools, however, will look at your school's profile, which your guidance counselor should send with your transcript and their recommendation.</p>
<p>Your counselor is lying and should be fired.</p>
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I asked my guidance counselor this question, and she said all GPAs are the same no matter what school you go to. I hope she isn't telling the truth though =0.
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<p>Definately not true. GPA across the nation is done differently, some are on a 6pt scale and others on the 100 while most are on 4 I think. Different schools way their classes differently so this is taken in context. At certain colleges, they don't even care about your gpa and just look at your transcript (grades).</p>
<p>kinda related Q:
do colleges also take into account that you went to a crappy public HS and did not have very many opportunities available to you?</p>
<p>Yes, they will look at what was available to you & what you did with the resources available to you (e.g. took classes at community college or on-line or did independent study are always options to supplement a poor school). Please consider dual enrollment (which many states offer, allowing you to get HS & college credits for community college courses or regular college courses you may take while in HS). Your counselor & teachers in their recs can also discuss how you used the resources which were available to you thoroughly.</p>
<p>Difficulty of HS matters: Some colleges know that my top-10 CA public magnet alma mater's 3.5 is better than lots of 4.0s at many normal HS.</p>
<p>This is especially true at the UCs, which definitely know their top public feeders and will take a lower GPA into account. I mean how else does a person with under 4.0 Weighted GPA get into Cal Engineering.</p>
<p>Colleges know. See my old posts about the University of Washington. They keep track of grades by high school. And compute grade fade. OES in Portland, OR is notoriously hard grader. All colleges are aware of it.</p>