We live in an area where the public schools weight every honors, AP and IB class as +1.0, and where honors levels classes exist for almost every subject, so a kid with a 4.0 UW and a lot of rigor will have between a 4.8 and a 4.95. My kid attends a private HS that doesn’t weight, and doesn’t designate classes as honors or AP or IB, but all of the classes are considered to be at least as rigorous as honors.
When looking at schools, and trying to figure out what might be a safety or a target or a reach, how do we interpret GPA’s above 4.0? For example, our state flagship has an average GPA around 4.5. How do we figure out how he’ll be compared in that context?
He’s a rising sophomore, we’re looking at schools early partially because his older brother is looking so he’s being dragged along on college tours, and partially because he’s an athlete which moves the timeline forward, but we aren’t at the point where we’ve got a list to do a chance me/match me thread.
One is how universities interpret weighted GPA. I do not think that they do. Weighted GPA is computed very, very differently at different high schools in the US. Also grade scales vary a lot. When you include international students the grade scales vary even more. Universities have to look at a student’s specific grades, and compare them with typical grade scales for each high school. My understanding is that this means that the high school needs to send the university some information regarding what the grade scale typically is at that high school.
The second issue may be how to compare your child’s GPA with the average GPA for students starting at a university. This for example might help a student or their parent to guess what the chances are for admissions. I do not know how you do this. Given how different weighted GPAs are at different high schools, I do not know what it means if a university or PrepScholar reports an average GPA of 4.1 or 4.3 or 4.5 for admitted students.
My understanding is that California does have a standard way to compute GPA, or a few standard ways. Someone from California will need to report on this (we live in the northeast of the US). There are most likely on-line resources to compute UC unweighted GPA and UC weighted GPA. Otherwise I think that your high school’s guidance counselors might be the people best able to guess your child’s chances at in-state schools.
There is also the issue that some schools admit by major, and some majors are more difficult for admissions (CS is famous for this, nursing might be another example).
And yes this does make it difficult to predict your child’s chances. This might be one reason (not the only reason) that students are often applying to a long list of universities.
Each school or state has a different system. Example - Florida publics give .5 for Honors and 1 for AP. Georgia has a different scale. UGA adds .5 for AP.
I wouldn’t worry. I’d know my UW GPA, rigor, classes taken and go from there. When you factor in test , rank of those reported, acceptance rates - you’ll be able to chance easy enough.
Admissions officers know that schools are different. Your child’s counselor will send a school profile to the admissions offices along with your child’s college applications. This will explain the grading system and the rigor of the HS classes.
Our public HS only lists unweighted GPA on the transcript, and also doesn’t have +/- grades (so no chance of A+ grades either). Admissions officers evaluate applications from our HS in proper context. They can see the rigor on the transcript… they don’t need a weighted GPA to figure that out.
Agree with @tamagotchi. This is a non-issue. Admission officers will use the school profile to review transcripts in the proper context. They adjust to a multitude of different grading systems.
FWIW our competitive public HS does not weight and students have no problem in terms of college acceptances. My D was in a program where they got written evaluations rather than grades and that was fine as well.
If you have lingering concerns, please discuss with the guidance counselor at the private HS.
Yes, except he’s not sure he wants to play in college. So, one of the reasons we’re looking early is to compare the schools he might be able to get into if he keeps playing at a high level, with the ones he might be able to get into if he doesn’t.
Different colleges do different things with HS GPA. Some possible ways:
Take HS GPA at face value. This obviously gives advantage to students from high schools that have heavy weighting, and disadvantage to students from high schools that do not weight.
Recalculate based on their own weighting (or unweighted). This is more likely if the college wants applicants to put in their high school courses and grades into an SRAR or similar portal or the college’s own application.
Holistically read the academic record in context of the high school.
This situation may disadvantage students at that school in the first case (take HS GPA at face value) and possibly the second at colleges that recalculate a weighted HS GPA (where the high school does not designate any honors or whatever courses).
If the private high school is an academically elite one, it may have dedicated college counselors who can chance your student better than anyone here.
Your kid’s GPA will be evaluated in the context of their school. GPAs (unless re-calculated like the UCs) are not compared across different schools.
You kid should use your HS counselor to categorize schools, which will be based on all their stats, rigor, class rank. Fundamentally, if a school publishes an average GPA (admitted? Enrolled?) you can’t use that unless you know exactly how it’s calculated AND if that’s how admissions uses the GPA when making admission decisions.
I say this a lot on CC and elsewhere…but the CDS GPAs (a common source for enrolled average GPA) are calculated in many different ways and often in a manner that has nothing to do with how admissions evaluates GPAs.
FWIW, colleges make their own determination of the rigor of the classes. Many private schools often say something like classes at level XYZ are equivalent to honors, those at level ABC at the level of AP courses. In those cases, colleges use the school report, the course guide, and even sometimes procure a syllabus to do their own evaluation.
Your kid should follow what their counselor says regarding his classes and level, and how to enter them in the various application softwares that they may have to use. Good luck.
There are colleges that just take HS GPA at face value for various purposes, and do not restrict comparison to applicants from the high school. Examples were the IU business major’s former auto-direct-admit criteria and Miami (OH) automatic scholarships.
I think this is where OP is seeking help - not necessarily concern about how schools will evaluate but how this student’s profile will be seen.
As they note, some schools report above a 4.0 - so are reporting a weighted GPA - so how do they, on their own, figure out where their kid sits.
That’s why I suggested a chance me - as well as talkingt to a counselor - so we can help them determine how they might fare - after taking into account rigor, test score, ECs, etc.
Exactly. I don’t think my kid is going to be disadvantaged coming from his school. I can look at the instagram of acceptances from this year’s seniors and see that kids are getting in to good schools.
I guess I could do a very vague chance me. Do I just guess at numbers? He’s a rising sophomore. It seems presumptive to say that he’ll keep his 4.0 GPA for 2 more years, for example. On the other hand, it’s likely that the list of AP exams he’s taken will get longer, and his EC’s could of course change.
I agree with you that he’ll have way more info for a chance me in 18 months. But it also seems like he needs to have a sense of whether he wants to get recruited, or what schools he might wanted to get recruited at, before June 2026 which is 10 months away.
That seems to mean beginning to explore issues like:
Where would he want to go if sports weren’t a factor?
How much would tuition be there?
How likely is he to get in there?
How do those schools compare to the schools were he might be recruited?
How much does he want to play in college?
Also, if he decides he doesn’t want to go the recruiting route.
Does the current balance of how he spends his time make sense?
It’s early for visits - but visiting schools of different sizes and environments (urban, rural, suburban, etc.) - maybe not hard core but if you’re on vacation, stop at one for an afternoon - or visit a few local. You don’t want to burn the student out 3 years early.
I’d say - the student should keep doing what they do academically, get involved in an activity or two, and be a kid - and you are very premature to even worry about this.
That’s just my belief.
There’s no point in putting up a hypothetical and today you name a school because it sounds great, and tomorrow - it’s out. My son had that with WUSTL, then Purdue - then once he visited Bama, no one else had a shot.
And if your kid has an interest and he shouldn’t in 9th grade - well my son switched majors 4 times in 11th/12th grades - and if he wasn’t settled going into college, that would have been ok too.
I’d say at this point - just let your kid live another year without college discussion - is what I’m suggest.
If and only if you’re on a long trip and there’s a college of interest along the way, stop and walk the campus - nothing crazy, no info session…just to get a sense to see - do I feel ok here.