I’m about to finish up my junior year, and I’m a bit concerned that my grades are going to throw off some admissions officers despite being counted as A’s at my high school. This year, I took 8 AP classes and ended up with around a 90 average in all but one, which was a 95 for CSA. I know colleges like course rigor, but will I be judged for having bare-minimum A’s, even though it does not affect my GPA? I go to a competitive public highschool and know colleges recalculate grades anyway, but I was just wondering.
Colleges won’t be splitting hair.
Does the letter and the number appear on your transcript or just the transcript? Because colleges might not even know what number got you that A.
In addition, 8 APs seems like overkill. Will you be able to get 4 or 5s in all of them?
What is a bare minimum A?
You’re fine. Some colleges explicitly count ANY “A” (even a 90) as an “A” when they recalculate. Others will count them as an A minus. In general a 3.7 with highest rigor will be on the low end but still in the realm of consideration for admission even at top 20 schools. Tippy top schools will still be a reach, as they are for everyone. Take your shot, and make sure you have targets and likelies you like.
People say a lot that colleges “recalculate GPAs” but in practice, I have only observed:
A. College takes transcript and evaluates it “holistically” i.e. looks at it and sees what is reported
B. College has student type in “SRAR” (self-reported academic record) and uses that to calculate their proprietary GPA to use
C. College takes GPA at face value from high school
I think a lot of this “recalculate” claim is for case (A) though I suppose someone might be calculating something somewhere.
At any rate: how does it appear on your transcript? Are they A- recorded? If you have A- grades appearing for all your classes, then having 5s on all your APs will likely be OK because it will imply that your school grades harshly but that you mastered the material and cooperated in class (as opposed to Cs and 5s which shows you were a bozo of some kind in class).
If your school pre-adds some chunk of credit and records your grades as A, then the colleges would never know.
If your school lists the actual percentages, then I think we’re back to the case of A- provided you do get all 5s on your APs.
If your school lists true grades (A- or percentages) but just provides an inflated GPA, then that GPA may or may not be meaningful to the college.
In any of these cases, you’re going to be compared to students who have real As in hard classes, just be aware of that. It doesn’t mean you can’t get in various places, but the whole business is extremely competitive and a tiny bit random at the end.
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One more thought…your title asks if A minuses are “red flags”. 7 A minuses and 1 A in all AP classes is definitely NOT a red flag.
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Im not taking all the exams, as I get a AB subscore for taking both calc ab and bc, and I’ve opted out of taking the ap psych exam given that I don’t think it will be that useful for my major anyway. The other exams I do hope have gone well, but If I get anything below a four, I believe I can choose not to report it.
I do agree that 8 is overkill, but at my highschool pretty much everyone stacks up on APs and I didn’t want that to affect how I was compared to the people at my school. That being said, I only took the classes that interested me and did not go the route of taking AP Art History or something for a GPA boost.
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They aren’t coded as A minuses since my school does not do plus or minus, but it does have the percentage listed. I do think I will perform well on the STEM APs that relate to my major, and the past 6 exams I’ve taken have all been 4s and 5s but I do feel shaky on two of the AP econ exams I took this year.
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So just to be clear, the only GPA on your transcript is on a 4 point scale…there is no cumulative percentage GPA?
At more selective schools, AOs will notice the percentage grades, and especially if comparing to other classmates with higher percentages, that will be taken into account during the transcript review process. Whether or not that would be the difference between admission or not, no one here can say.
All you can do is control what you can control and have a balanced college list with at least one safety/highly likely school you would be happy to attend.
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No our district in general does not do percentage GPAs, but I guess since the percentages for what I earned are listed next to each class, a college that values percentage scores could calculate it on their own?
Some may do their own percentage calculation, but I doubt it’s many. AOs will look at the percentage grades as well as the letter grades. And that’s just one part of the transcript review…rigor, number of core courses, grades, GPA, class rank (some will try to approximate it if the school doesn’t report it). And the transcript review is just one part of the holistic review of the entire app (at schools that do holistic reviews.) The relatively more selective colleges are more likely to make judgments between the percentage grades within the A range.
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If your school uses Naviance or similar, you may want to look at the average GPA for the students admitted to the schools you’re interested in. In my kid’s school, there’s a huge difference between the kids with a 95+ vs 90 GPA in the colleges they get into. But that may be different for your school.
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This student’s school doesn report 90 or 95 GPA, but a GPA out of 4 where each A=4pts B=3pts.. regardless of percentage as long as it’s within the “points band”, for As.
Right, but the transcript does show the percentile grade in addition to the letter grade. At the school where I work, we absolutely pay attention to the percentile grades too (especially as compared to classmates.)
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Thanks! I guess I’m confused then. The student says the school has the percentages listed next to each class on the transcript, which I assumed the colleges would see. If they do see the percentages, I would expect a 90 to be seen as quite different from a 95 even if the school considers both an A. If not, then of course it wouldn’t matter.
Agreed…many AOs will notice this. The more selective the school, the more the difference may matter. It might not matter at all if the student is at/near the top of the class (which we don’t know their relative standing.)
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I’ll add that depending on the schools you’re intending to apply to the AO’s are usually broken out by regions so that they understand these nuances for the school’s in their districts. A small school far away from your home that never sees applications from students in your HS might not be familiar but your in-state schools (or other schools many of the students at your HS apply to) are likely to understand how to interpret your transcript.
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I think it’ll really depend on the way the scale is explained and student rank.
My understanding was that the scale had 90 as an A and I realize I may have misunderstood the way the grades are reported -
if the transcript reads AAA, it’ll be read as what it is. I doubt the college would have rine to parse how the teacher got to that A.
If the transcript shows 90, 90, 92 and the scale indicates 90=A, the college also accepts that just like they accept scales where 95=A, where the best students get an A. There are all sorts of grading scales :(.
I admit I was thinking of prep schools where scales can be a bit more lenient on the high end because it’s hard to get an A and colleges know that that A is evidence of real excellence or where 90 is similar to a 96 or a 100 elsewhere.
I’m afraid here the OP is asking “does my A minus that doesn’t get factored into my GPA as an A- look like an A or an A- to college admissions” and there I’m afraid the answer would be an A- reads as an A- which isn’t an A.
In addition, if the transcript shows 90 90 92 etc, and several applicants have the same GPA but 95 98 96 or even 98, 101, 104.., it would make a difference indeed as to what the 90 “means” to the college admission reader.
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If class rank comes into play, I’m currently ranked 16/708, but then again, that is because I have gotten the required A to maintain my UW GPA at 4.0 and have just enough course rigor to boost my weighted GPA a bunch. There may be kids who have mostly 95+ that rank well below me because they choose to take just one on-level class. I guess being relatively high in rank would give me an idea of how colleges will compare me to other students, but wouldn’t they be able to better identify nuances to class rank because of the percentiles listed anyway?