Need some input for filling out commonapp. Student will be applying for econ/history/linguistics majors.
On GPA, student has 3.71 UW and 4.38 W - both are mentioned on school transcript. The UW grading scale is 4.0 and weighted scale is 5.0. What GPA and grade scale should we mention in the commonapp?
Question on honors and awards vs activities. Student did NSLI-Y summer program and wondering whether to put that in awards (since its a selective program that was free - essentially the student got a award/scholarship) or activities.
Other top awards that will be listed are:
NMSF
AP Scholar with Distinction
Math and Social Science Honor Societies
Other activities that will be listed are (we do have 10 activities to complete the list, just sharing the top ones):
@Mwfan1921 likely can give an opinion on these questions.
Regarding GPA, I would use the unweighted GPA mostly because high schools have wildly varying ways to compute weighted GPAs. Unweighted are less variable. But that’s my opinion.
For all these questions have your student also speak with their HS counselor.
Generally it’s 4.0 scale for both unweighted and weighted, I recommend using weighted GPA. There can be some variability, for example, some states, like SC, do have a true 5.0 weighted scale.
Note, the GPA question is optional and it’s ok to leave it blank. Many students leave this blank, because schools won’t really look at it, they will look at the transcript (and/or SRAR, Common app courses and grades, etc.)
Activity. If he wants to write something more detailed than the characters allow in the activity section, he can put a paragraph in the additional info section. (ditto for the research with a university prof)
Listen to @Mwfan1921 who has a lot more experience with a lot more colleges, and also more current info than mine (my kids have been out of undergrad for a long time).
Thanks. So we would write 4.38 W GPA on 4.0 scale - is that right?
NSLI-Y is a very structured program so we won’t have much to add other than he completed the program which is why we were thinking it could go under awards/scholarships and we then have one more spot on the activity list for something that we want to describe in 150 characters.
Even though it’s not open admission, NSLI-Y is not an academic award. If one has more than 10 meaningful activities, consider combining activities and/or using additional info.