Calculating the GPA (again!)

JHS
Fri, 06 Jul 2007 17:16:19 +0000

One of the issues buried in there is that some of the really nifty private schools don’t offer “AP” or “IB” or “honors” designated classes, and yet somehow their students regularly gain admission to selective colleges.

I suspect GPA is important, but more in terms of comparing students within a school, or comparing a student to past candidates from the same school. And even there, the colleges probably compute their own GPAs to take account of whatever they think is important, and to wring out the effects of whatever other algorithm the high school uses.