<p>Does anyone have links for gpa scales that award fractional points for pluses or minuses? or are like this one?</p>
<p>97-100 = 4.5
93-96 = 4.25
90-92 = 4
87-89 = 3.5
83-86 = 3.25</p>
<p>or something like that? Is it called a 4.5 scale? I need to show a frame of reference and not like I’m making it up. Are these used for private schools?</p>
<p>Our school does fractional points for +/-s, but not as granular as your post. Examples at our kid’s private independent school:</p>
<p>B- = 2.7
B = 3.0
B+ = 3.3
A- = 3.7
A = 4.0
A+ = 4.3</p>
<p>Who are you trying to prove it to? Are you trying to talk your school into using a more granular scale?</p>
<p>Here are two:</p>
<p>[UW</a> Grading System](<a href=“http://www.washington.edu/students/gencat/front/Grading_Sys.html]UW”>University of Washington Office of the Registrar)</p>
<p>[Office</a> of the University Registrar - How the General University GPA is Determined | Student Affairs](<a href=“http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/registrar/students/gpa-how]Office”>http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/registrar/students/gpa-how)</p>
<p>I think the OP is trying to get a reliable calculator to provide a weighted GPA for an unweighted GPA.</p>
<p>I think most schools that use a 100-point scale for grades calculate GPA based on the 100-point scale, without converting it to a 4- or 5-point scale. My kids had 100-point-scale GPAs (actually, with weighting, it was more like a 115-point scale – about 20% of every class had weighted GPAs higher than 100).</p>
<p>If you want to convert 100-point grades to 4-point grades with +/-, there is no consensus on where the breaks are. Basically, there are two camps. The simple approach is 80-83 = B- = 2.7, 84-86= B = 3.0, 87-89 = B+ = 3.3 (and equivalent for As and Cs, and Ds distributed over the range 65-69, with 65 > x = F = 0.0). The other is 83-85 = B- = 2.7, 86-89 = B = 3.0, 90-92 = B+ = 3.3, with the same scale for As, Cs, and Ds (except 65 > x = F).</p>
<p>There are as many methods of calculating weighted GPAs as there are high schools and colleges.</p>
<p>In NC (and I think FL?), students are awarded an extra point for an honors class and 2 extra points for AP, so it’s a 6.0 scale. In MA, students get and extra half-point for honors and a full point for AP, so it’s a 5.0 scale. Generally you can add .3 for a + and subtract .3 for a - after the letter grade. Most colleges will re-calculate your GPA using their own scale and counting whatever classes they chose - some say only core academics, others use all classes including Phys Ed. Some of the more selective colleges will use an UN-weighted GPA because if you aren’t taking mostly honors and AP classes they’re not going to accept you anyway.</p>
<p>If you want to know how a college weights hs gpa’s, email the admissions office and ask them. Or if you’re visiting and in an information session, ask them. I’ve found they will tell you if you ask, and every college may have a different answer.</p>
<p>What I did was use the more generous online calculators to translate my son 100 scale GPA for determining reaches and the more conservative ones for determining safeties. (Though I still used what the school says is an A- or B+.) The one issue with both of the top examples is that many online chances calculators (like the how do I stack up one at College Board, only use a top score of 4.0).</p>
<p>Where do I find the “generous” calculators? I have been unable to find anything above a 3.3 for an 87-89?</p>
<p>I think that 3.3. for 87-89 is the generous calculator. The alternative, as JHS wrote, is a 3.0 for 87-89.</p>
<p>Wow. That’s awfully granular! My kids’ hs just does A=4.0, B=3.0, etc. No pluses or minuses at the semester level. And no one knows or cares what the actual grades were. The kid with the 90.8 and the kid with the 99.9 both get an A in the class.</p>
<p>They do weight the honors and AP such that A=5.0, B=4.0, etc. - but there are only a certain number of those courses, such that no one could realistically ever achieve anywhere close to a 5.0 weighted.</p>
<p>I think you’re over thinking it. (And my kids went to a high school where the val had an average of 106 point something and the sal was 105 point something one year.) </p>
<p>To give an example of what I did:
Weighted GPA was 97 - so I figured that was about a 4.0
Unweighted GPA was 93 - so I figured that was about a 3.6
Unweighted GPA when I removed the orchestra courses my school was included was 87 - so I figured that was about 3.3 maybe a little less.</p>
<p>You really don’t need to calculate GPAs more exactly than that.</p>
<p>Then I made sure that the safety schools my son applied to accepted most 3.3 students. We felt free to be a little riskier with the non-safety schools in my son’s case for three reasons: 1. He was in the top 10% of his class. 2. He had very good SAT scores. 3. He loved his safest school.</p>
<p>When I sorted schools I actually thought the percentage of top-ranked students was a better indication of how they looked at school grades than the GPA numbers they post.</p>
<p>This is how it works at my kids school:</p>
<p>98 - 100 4.0
93 - 97 3.8
90 - 92 3.5
87 - 89 3.2
83 - 86 2.8</p>
<p>Which is why I don’t believe for one minute that universities are recalculating by hand the GPAs of 20,000 applicants to correct for the myriad of different systems that exist. I’m tempted to think they just squint at the whole thing.</p>
<p>
Pizzagirl, I did admissions for architecture grad school and squinting at grades is pretty much what we did. I looked to see how they’d done in math and physics. I looked to see if they had taken art, art history, design, or other courses that indicated an interest in architecture or design. I looked to see if there were any D’s or F’s and if there were C’s how many and in what courses. Then we read the recommendations, looked at the portfolio, looked at the GRE score (anything over 650 or so was more than fine), read the essay and gave the whole application a score from 1 to 6. Three people read each application and the top scorers got admissions letters. It was not a science!</p>
<p>Now, I don’t think Columbia’s architecture school has the same priorities as undergrad admissions offices, but I just don’t think they spend hours agonizing whether an 87 should be a 3.2 or a 3.3.</p>
<p>Some schools recalculate GPA by filling our a grid with just academic classes and then:</p>
<h1>A’s x4 + #B’s x3 + #C’s x2 + #D’s divided by the total number of grades</h1>
<p>This is an easy, but very conservative GPA.</p>
<p>One school told us their method was to take the student’s GPA, divide by the highest GPA in the class (which is reported on the school profile) and then multiply by 4.0. This is also an easy, but very generous calculation.</p>
<p>I don’t believe you can trust the GPA information reported to the College Board through the common dataset. I think some colleges report weighted averages, and others do not, so you really need to ask. Most admissions offices will tell you when asked. </p>
<p>Unless your kid is very lopsided, SAT / ACT range is a better way judge safety / match / reach. (Plus caveat for % accepted)</p>
<p>mom2sons- was that a college? Which one? maybe they have it online?
“One school told us their method was to take the student’s GPA, divide by the highest GPA in the class (which is reported on the school profile) and then multiply by 4.0. This is also an easy, but very generous calculation.”</p>
<p>That works better for my S as the highest gpa at his private school is 94 and his avg is 87. They have a great record of admissions but its creating an issue with merit aid cut offs.</p>
<p>Just curious - why wouldn’t you use the GPA that’s on your transcript? If the college you’re applying to wants to convert all applicant grades to the same scale, they will. If not, you’re pretty much stuck with what’s on the transcript.</p>
<p>And yes, the scale you presented is a 4.5 scale. You would say you had an X.XX on a 4.5 scale.</p>
<p>The school is wrong. An A is a 4.0 an A+ is a 4.0 so for unweighted GPA they should be calculating to a 4.0.
Worse, in my D school they calculate the GPA which is already there for them they already have B, B+, A-, A and darn A+ just to confuse things. So when they report the WEIGHTED GPA they do so by reporting as a number–in my D case its a 94. Now I would call that a 4.0 and so would college board on their converter page…but several other pages say that a 4.0 is a 95-100 but the joke here is they can not extrapolate GPA from 1.0 to 4.0 then convert it to numberic of 94 for an A (which is normally range from 93-100, since they have A+ I guess they make A 94-97 and A+87-100 but WHY the heck covert the weighted GPA to a number which is NOT what the colleges want–they want a 4.0 or a 4.1…I would have said a 94 was at least a 4.0 and possibly a 4.1 if they had not done the conversion…the effect is assuming that an A is a certain number and that is not fair…if its reported as a 4.0 an A and its say an AP or honors class they should multiply by a weighting factor like say 1.1 for honors and come up with say 4.4 for that A-not come up with grades from 1 to 100…the conversion makes the granularity finer than it is and in effect lowers the GPA by them assuming an A is below a 95 and they cannot know that without the teacher also reporting a number grade which they DO NOT! I am going to talk to the principal on this–i know if they do it consistently its okay for them but its just wrong…the converters are all over the place…my guess is the ranking then becomes more important than anything and when they are bunched together all at 94,95,95,1, 95.2 in a smaller school it can make a rank drop many positions in some respects due to an incorrect conversion method imho…some mathematician can tell me why I am wrong but I do not see why you already would have the grades on a 4.0 scale. Like say my kid has a 3.85 GPA with half her classes being honors. Well then her weighted GPA should not be 94 which is at best 4.0 but should be more like 4.3 or 4.4 when done properly…IMHO they have screwed the pooch on this one royally…***dik</p>
<p>I was replying to dadinator about his school method being wrong to the low side.
I also meant to say that the calculations when weighting should bump say a B to a B+ for an honors class and perhaps a B to an A for an AP class. If I were to run my Ds. numbers through with 75% honors classes using that formulat I am pretty sure her 3.85 would simply convert to about a 4.2 and have no need for silly conversions to numbers-especially not to leave the weighted GPA in effect as a number from 1 to 100–that is not a GPA but a percentage. Oye Vay!</p>
<p>Our HS does not convert to a 4 scale GPA. Class rank is determined with a weighted percent GPA with 5 % given to honors classes and 15% given to AP classes. However, transcript GPAs are unweighted percents. So and child can have a 98% weighted GPA and a 94% uweighted, but only the unweighted is shown to colleges. Yuck.</p>