<p>In my school, if you get, for example, 1 high A, three lows As, and 2 low Bs, you have the same GPA as someone who got 6 high Bs. How would colleges look at this situation? Would one set of grades be 'better' than the other?</p>
<p>They will most likely take your individual letter grades into account. Colleges are highly concerned about what you get in your core classes (math, history, english, science and language), so they have to look at your letter grades. </p>
<p>So yes, the colleges seeing you got A’s in some classes and B’s in others is more valuable to them than seeing that you have a B+ average in all of your classes. Sometimes, when recalculating the GPA for their college, colleges will exclude the electives and just do the cores.</p>
<p>An A is an A, doesn’t matter A+, A- or A.</p>
<p>This is a mixed bag – most colleges will first try and compare you to other students from your school. So in that case, even though your GPA is calculated as if the A+, A- or A are the same, the admissions person WOULD see a difference between your A and another applicant’s A-. Our town’s public high school also lumps all grades together like this (meaning B+, B and B- are all the same as a 3.0 B). So if you have all As in your classes, for example, and another applicant from your school has all A-s (just using this as an example), but you have the same GPA, you better believe that the admissions officer will see a difference between your courseload and your classmate’s…</p>
<p>That being said – if you are only applying to large state schools (such as the Cal State or UnivofCal system), then this may all be a wash. With so many tens of thousands of applications, there is little ability to “read” an application and instead, it may be a straight numbers game in which case you and your classmate may appear equal.</p>