Calculating the GPA (again!)

thumper1
Fri, 06 Jul 2007 09:00:41 +0000

Between my two kids, they applied to 12 colleges. Each college recomputed GPA using a different formula. To be honest, I also do not believe that GPA has taken on more importance than standardized test scores. If that were the case, my daughter would be rolling in merit money. It all depends on the schools. And to add fuel to the fire, high schools also have multiple and varied ways of computing GPA. Some of you may remember a thread here (a few years ago) where I challenged the GPA calculations at my kids’ high school because for some odd reason the weighted GPAs for honors/AP kids was LOWER than the unweighted. Their calculation had been wrong for 20 years. It was changed. However in their research (which they shared with me and I had done myself as well) I found 20 different ways to compute hs gpa and that was just in this very small region of this state. I wouldn’t worry a lick about GPA calculation unless it looks wrong (like my daughter’s did). Aside from that…it’s just one more number.