Is there a "Standard" GPA/Weighted GPA algorithm?

Paying for College
1

Our high school has an unusual GPA algorithm that makes our kids’ GPAs look bad compared to kids at schools using other, more common, scales. (Honors classes are not weighted, AP classes are weighted to just 4.1 on a 4 point scale, and you don’t get a 4.0 (unweighted class) or 4.1 (weighted class) unless you got 100% in the class, and each point lower than that gets assigned a lower grade point.)

When applying to schools outside our region that offer scholarships based largely on GPA, some of which have said that they just use whatever the school sends and don’t recompute, this puts our kids at a disadvantage. Although the school profile does explain their system, the fact that some schools still insist on using it at face value is unfortunate. I think our guidance counselor would be willing to recompute my DS’s GPA and put it on his counselor recommendation, but I can’t seem to find any real “standard” to ask her to use. The variants seem to be almost as many as there are high schools, with the main commonalities being (a) grades are clumped in bands that all get assigned the same Grade Point, and (b) the bump for honors and AP classes is much higher than what our school does. But within that, there are so many differences. (Do you get a different grade point for an A+ versus and A? What are the cutoffs for the different grades? How much weight is assigned to Honors or AP classes? etc…)

Is there something that could be considered a standard for high school GPA computation?

2

I don’t think there is a standard, as you are seeing. Our (public) HS also used a stingy weighting for AP, which meant that our two kids really had no chance at being a top 5 or 10 student, due to those with much easier schedules pulling perfect grades. Didn’t hurt them in admissions one little bit. I understand your frustration though with scholarships which are fixed on whatever the school does.

3

There is no standard. But your GC will be including a school profile that will give things like GPA ranges for the class

4

There is no real overall standard. There are some standards that may be applicable to specific students, such as the high school GPA recalculation used by California public universities, or the South Carolina high school GPA calculation.

Yes, colleges that take weighted GPA at face value for admissions or scholarships (e.g. University of Alabama) do create incentive for high schools to use exaggerated weighting of the kind that can result in 5.x or 6.x weighted GPAs.

5

We have no weights at all, so yours is better than ours!

6

For helping the AP kids rank slightly higher, ours is better, but for what it looks like to the outside world, I’m not sure it is @Booajo. Kids with all As in honors and AP classes will have a GPA under 4.0