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Okay.
With respect to this question, two things matter in college admissions.
1.) What grades did you get? How many of them are A's, B's, etc. This is your unweighted GPA.
2.) How hard were your classes? How many of them were AP's, Honors, etc.
Weighted GPA is a frankly lazy and inaccurate way to combine the two factors together into one number. It is a very poor measure, because not all AP's are equally difficult, not all schools offer the same number of courses, some schools are just harder, etc.
From what I have seen, top-tier schools consider the two factors separately, which is the proper thing to do. Duke ranks students on a 1-5 scale in each of those two categories (that does not mean that they are given the same importance). "Hardest course load available" gets a 5 for difficulty; 4.0 gets a 5 for grades; there is no need to "weight" the GPA based on number of AP's, etc.
Collegeconfidential students tend to focus much more on weighted GPA. In the context of an Internet bulletin board, this is probably correct, since most students will assess their own courseload as "very difficult" even if this is not the case. Since universities have access to much better information -- including details provided by college guidance counselors as well as a historical context of that high school -- there is no need for them to do the same thing.
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