<p>Information about Stanford’s recalculation has been posted by several admission officers and Stanford reps. The idea of recalculating is to put everyone on more similar ground and compensate for differences in grading systems in different HSs, like you listed. It also gives the opportunity to discount areas that are less important to them. Regarding +/- grades, several years ago a Stanford rep wrote the following:</p>
<p>*“When reviewing applications, we recalculate a student’s GPA using a straight 4.0 scale, discounting +/-, and include only those classes that are considered core academic courses.” *</p>
<p>This fits with the quote from Stanford’s website that was posted earlier on the thread, which also mentions the focus on core academic subjects, saying:</p>
<p>“will focus our evaluation on your coursework and performance in 10th, 11th and 12th grades, primarily in the core academic subjects of English, mathematics, science, foreign language and history/social studies”</p>
<p>Note that this is quite similar to the recalculation that the University of California schools use. They still see the full transcript and may consider performance in freshman year and electives, but the emphasis is on the areas listed in the quotes.</p>