Hi everybody. Unfortunately my schools weighted GPA scale is very difficult. For example, using another (public) school’s GPA scale, I would have a 4.2/4.3. However, at my school, I barely have a 3.8. Would this affect my chances in gaining admission to colleges such as William and Mary, who list their average GPA as 4.16? Thanks for the help!
No. AOs will evaluate based upon your particular situation; there is no standard for G{A weighting and every AO knows that.
A high school profile which explains (among other things) your HS grading scale and the levels of courses offered will be attached to your transcript so your grades will be reviewed in the proper context. Admission officers are adept at dealing with many different types of HS grading scales. For example our HS does not weight honors/AP classes and it does not hurt students at all in terms of college admissions. Also note that some colleges recalculate GPA based on their own criteria (ex. unweighted, core classes only etc.)
You may want to use your HS Naviance if it is available as a guide to see where you may get in with your academic stats.
As skieurope says, I think most admission offices have a consistent way of translating transcripts to their own standard to enable fair evaluation. There is not a standard across institutions, but that doesn’t really matter as it does not matter from an applicants perspective.