Hello, I have just finished my second semester of 11th grade. My grades have just been finalized and I just received an A minus in one of my classes. I have a 4.0 unweighted but I also have 5 A minuses. I always thought an A was an A until someone told me that some colleges weight A minuses lower than an A. I’m not sure what colleges do this. Two colleges I’m looking at right now are Georgia Tech and Purdue. Does anyone know if these schools will lower my high school GPA because of these A minuses? Thanks!
If you look online everyonr weights an A- as a 3.7. So an A isn’t an A, but good luck with those schools.
If any schools do reject you, I think we can safely assume it will NOT be the result of having a single A minus on your transcript.
A single no (I think 1 A- over 4 years make you look more human and helps), 5 possibly may hurt you at HYPS but I doubt either of the two schools you mention would hold it against you, are you instate for either? You would have to check their policies. Private schools count As and A-s differently. Publics vary. UCs count all As the same as does UMichigan not familiar with the 2 you mention. Since most of your A-s were in earlier years I would not worry about it. You have an excellent record.
Our highly rated school treats A- grades in honors/AP courses as an A for the purpose of calculating an unweighted GPA. It hasn’t hurt our admissions at selective schools.
^ How is that fair to people who got a full A?
Lots of misinformation! A- is not always 3.7. And what is an A-? 89-92%? 91-93%? This is useless unless all schools do the same thing. And even then, some schools are “harder” than others. Indeed, within the same schools: some teachers are “harder” than others!
Regardless of what your school does, Some schools do recalculate your grades to their scale. An example: UMich treats 90-100 = A = 4.0.
Personally, I think a % scale is much better. Not perfect. But Apples to Apples and all…
Many colleges look at grades in context. Don’t worry about A minuses in isolation. In many cases, it depends on your whole application, assuming you’re in the range stats-wise. Just as As don’t guarantee acceptances, A minuses and Bs don’t necessarily preclude them.
Ex: A handful of students I know just went through the application process with Bs and got acceptances from Harvard, Chicago, Penn, Duke, Dartmouth, Brown, Vanderbilt. Some of the straight A students from the same school were rejected by these schools. Some students were surprised as they thought grades were all that mattered.
Bottom line: Don’t overthink any one part of your application.
Who ever said that life was fair? Individual schools can set up their grading policies as they see fit.
Does anybody know? Yes; the admissions office at those schools. Will they tell you what they do? Probably not. At this point, it is what it is. Don’t worry about things you cannot change.
Ha, I need to find the list of colleges that consider an A- an A. My son’s year end transcript is literally an A- in every single class.
Well, the UC schools drop any “+” or “-” from grades, and just consider A/B/C…
Yes but if you are out of state at a UC school then you need to have lots of APs because they do not consider out of state honor classes with weighting (they do weigh in state honors classes.