<p>I went to a UMD presentation and they said that they don’t really look at GPAs, weighted or unweighted. They said that they look at your overall performance. So now I’m trying to figure out how that translates. Do they do their own weighting of grades to understand where you stand? My school gives a .5 increase for Honors and .7 for AP. As a result, I have a GPA of 3.95 on a 4.0 scale (or 3.2 unweighted). So how will they look at me?</p>
<p>99% of colleges will re-weight your transcript because every school system can be different. For some their re-weight will be identical to their school gpa, for other it may go up or down.</p>
<p>For ex: In our NC school, honors was 4.5, AP was 5.0 ona 7 pt scale. In VA, it is a 10 pt scale.</p>
<p>They also look at the school profile. The school will submit with the transcript their profile, and that includes the courses offered. If you only took Honors when you could have taken APs, it will hurt you because you did not take the most rigorous course load available.</p>
<p>On top of that in the profile, the school will give the % that go Ivy, 4 IS/OOS, Public, Private, 2 yr, trade, or no further education. Obviously if 50% go Ivy, and you are at 50%+1, they are not going to mark you down. However, if 0% go to Ivy, and 90% go to 2 yr. You will be marked down if you are in the top 15% of the class. In other words it is also how competitive they view the school that they look at.</p>
<p>I can’t see how you have a 3.95 out of 4.0 weighted, and a 3.2 uw. Your 3.2 would be out of 4.0., your 3.95 would be out of whatever the avg for the .5 or .7 bump. Think about it if you took all 4.5 classes, and got straight A’s, you couldn’t have a 4.5 gpa out of 4.0.</p>
<p>Thanks for the response Bullet. I’ve taken all Honors classes along with a handful of APs, so since my school adds .5 for honors and .7 for AP, it brings me up more than that half point. I think…</p>
<p>Bulletandpima, I think when a school grades on a 4 point scale, gpa’s are usually just quoted as being “out of 4 points” even when weighting brings it above 4.0. For example, your gpa might be 4.0 unweighted and 4.4 weighted, on a 4 point scale. Sounds like your kids’ school might do things differently.</p>
<p>I agree it probably is semantics.</p>
<p>I think for ctcollegekid it is now going to be if they are IS or OOS. IF CT stands for Conn., 3.95 w might be a reach, it will depend on the SAT and ACT score. For our DS’s friends that came from NJ/NY/CT they were all in the 4.1+ wgpa for the low end, but they had strong SAT’s @1400 out of 1600.</p>
<p>NJ/NY/CT are incredibly competitive. I cannot stress how competitive this area is with regards to UMD. If I had to rank them among the 3, it would be NJ, NY and CT in that order.</p>