While many schools recalculate GPAs in whatever ways they want for admission and merit aid purposes, there are examples I’ve seen of schools accepting the highest reported GPA on the transcript for Admission/Merit cutoff purposes.
Examples commonly cited here are:
Indiana (Kelley): uses highest reported GPA for Kelley Direct Admission
Alabama: Uses highest reported GPA on transcript for merit cutoffs
Mississippi State: Uses highest reported GPA for merit cutoffs
Does anyone have other examples? If a high school did away with weighting wouldn’t they disadvantage their students in these scenarios?
Yes, if a college accepts weighted HS GPA from the HS at face value, then HSs with exaggerated weighting (e.g. +2 or even +3 for some courses added to the usual A=4, B=3, etc.) will give their students an advantage at those colleges.
My D’s HS had a wonky grading scale. No differentiation between an honors and AP course in terms of weighted bump and a 92.5% was a B+ so a 3.3. It didn’t seem to negatively impact merit awards which I assumed was because the grading scale went with the transcript.
I would hope if universities start using AI to screen for GPA that they are savvy enough to program a system that reviews the grading scale too but maybe that is wishful thinking???
Yes! Is your HS considering this? On one of the counselor forums I’m on, a HS counselor just asked this question because their school is considering not doing weighting anymore. I hope they don’t go that route. There is real money, and real admissions (like Kelley) at stake. For example, at my kids’ HS, students who rank well into the 3rd quartile still qualify for Kelley direct admit, provided they also meet the test score requirement which many/most do.
Of course, the problem with heavily weighted HS GPA is that then you get complaints in April about “why didn’t my kid with a 4.5 GPA get into [highly selective college]?”. Of course, the answer is that [highly selective college] recalculated using its own system, resulting in 3.7 weighted out of 3.4 unweighted…
So do those schools not consider the high school’s grading system at all? I’m trying to think back now where my D’s classmates saw the biggest merit aid outside of the instate options!
Please stay on-topic to the OP. This is not a thread for debating the value, fairness or process of weighting GPAs. It only asks for colleges that utilize them as stated on the transcript. Thank you for your understanding.