I stumbled across a UC GPA calculator. My kid doesn’t want to go to school in California, but I like mathy things so I played with it.
Can someone explain the capped thing to me? It seems as though, from playing with it, if the proportions of A’s vs B’s and of honors vs more honors stay constant, so the weighted and unweighted GPA stay constant, the capped GPA goes down as the number of credits goes up. So when I calculate my kid’s GPA for sophomore year, it’s one thing and then when I forecast for junior or senior year imagining that everything else is stable, it falls.
Why would they penalize a kid for taking extra classes or passing an extra grade? Aren’t those things colleges want?
The UC’s actually will calculate out 3 UC GPA’s. UC’s only use 10-11th grades from the a-g course requirements for the calculation.
Unweighted with no extra honors points maximum 4.0
Capped weighted with 8 semesters of honors points maximum 4.4
Uncapped weighted with unlimited semesters of honors points maximum 5.0
Yes due to the 8 semester Honors point cap, the more a-g course grades taken, the lower the Capped weighted UC GPA will be calculated. This is why the UC’s not only calculate all 3 UC GPA’s, they look at the number of a-g courses taken along with the individual grades and the number of UC approved Honors, AP, IB or DE/CC courses.
The GPA is not evaluated within a vacuum and the student is evaluated within the context of what is offered at their HS.
Although the capped weighted GPA decreases with additional a-g courses taken, the student is not penalized since the UC’s expect students to have taken than the minimum a-g courses taken to be competitive. The capped weighted UC GPA helps to “level the playing field’ so to speak since some students do not have access to many AP/IB, Honors, CC/DE courses.
So, I have one kid who goes to a high school where the normal credit load is 6 classes, and one who will go to a high school with a normal credit load is 9.
This means that at the end of the junior year, the first kid’s highest possible capped weighted GPA is 4.3333 . . . and the other kid, with the much more challenging courseload, is 4.222 . . .
I understand leveling it, I just don’t understand why they don’t level it as a percent of classes, or as a maximum bump.
I’m not complaining since I don’t anticipate either kid going to a UC school. I’m just baffled.
The UC’s are not going to make an admission decision just based on the Capped weighted GPA. It is only 1 area of criteria used in their Comprehensive review so they would consider the differences in the 2 HS’s course schedules.
At least the UC’s are transparent about how they calculate and weight their GPA’s for admission purposes. Many colleges are not.
I get that. I don’t understand why they generate a number if it doesn’t tell you anything useful. Like why bother to calculate a number if the number isn’t going to be helpful.
As I said, I am just being curious. This doesn’t impact my kids so it’s all hypothetical to me.
The UC’s require a minimum GPA to apply and it is based on the UC Capped weighted GPA (3.0 in-state/3.4 OOS/International).
The UC Capped weighted GPA is helpful in accounting for differences in what a HS has to offer in terms of in the type of courses and rigor. It is also the GPA most commonly listed on the UC Freshman profiles and the UCOP statistical data. It is another data point in helping to evaluate applicants from different HS’s.
Honors/AP/IB/DE English
Honors/AP/IB/DE Math
Honors/AP/IB/DE Science
Honors/AP/IB/DE Social Science
and then 4 more Honors/AP/IP/DE electives each semester, like maybe a second math, and a foreign language, and computer science etc . . .
They get all A’s
Their capped GPA is 4.25
I understand why it’s capped, that it wouldn’t be fair to student A whose high school might not have enough advanced electives, or might require PE or might not allow students to take more than 6 credits or whatever. I don’t understand why it’s capped in a way that leads to a lower GPA than student A. Like if they said “the maximum bump is 0.4” or “you can’t get credit for more than 50% of your classes as Honors/AP/IB/DE” that would make sense to me.
In addition to accounting for differences from one HS to another, inclusion of the capped GPA in comprehensive review means that there is a minor downside to students taking the most intense schedule possible with as many a-g classes as possible and as many honors / AP classes as possible.
Personally I think it’s a feature, rather than a bug, that there are tradeoffs involved in gaming the system to maximize UC capped GPA, UC uncapped GPA, and total number of a-g courses. You can’t maximize all of these at once.
Students with high rigor will still show up as such in the comprehensive review, as they have lots of a-g courses and a high uncapped GPA.
But perhaps the system is indicating that it is also okay for students to aim for more balance in their schedules and not just max out rigor.
Bottom line is a student will not be penalized either way since they will be evaluated within the context of their HS.
Top UC’s will focus more on the UC Unweighted and Uncapped Weighted GPA’s such as UC Berkeley and UCLA.
I asked this very question last year. S24 started taking college classes right after 8th grade. Based on “UC Capped GPA” formula, his denominator is increased by 15 while numerator is capped, so his capped UC and CSU GPA was 4.1-ish, while fully weigh everything, it would be 4.7. It is what it is and since only CSU application will spit out a “calculated GPA” based on what you input, I wrote SLO about this. Reply I got from admission was exactly what Gumbymom says here: No worry about the number, application is not reviewed in a vacuum.
Out of state students do not receive a bump in their UC GPA for honors courses. They only receive a bump for AP or IB courses. As was mentioned above, UC GPA is only one metric that the UCs use when evaluating academic performance.
In state students only receive a UC GPA bump if their honors course is considered a UC honors course. Each high school has different honors classes recognized by the UCs. Generally, classes such as Geometry H, Algebra 2H, Biology H do not receive a UC GPA honors bump. In-state students can look up which of their HS’s courses receive a UC GPA bump on this UC website. Courses with a GPA bump will have an orange banner with a yellow star next to it.
We are in the similar situation. We have more than 15 community college a-g courses (not part of high school transcript, so concurrent enrollment) so UC capped GPA is much different due to increased number of denominator. Hopefully the rigor is considered, not just GPA number in this case.
Since Berkeley is a competitive campus, satisfying the minimum requirements is often not enough to be competitive for selection. In addition to the basic admission requirements, the campus selects its first-year class through an assessment that includes a holistic review of your academic performance as measured primarily by:
Your weighted and unweighted UC grade point average (calculated using 10th and 11th grade UC-approved courses only)
Your planned 12th grade courses
Your pattern of grades over time
The number of college preparatory, Advanced Placement (AP), International Baccalaureate (IB), honors and transferable college courses you have completed
Your level of achievement in those courses relative to other UC applicants at your school
Your scores on AP or IB exams and SAT subject exams
UC Berkeley is test-free, meaning we will not use standardized exams (SAT and ACT) in our review process. Subject exams are optional but can still be value added. (Note: Our school code is 4833.) If you report your scores to one campus, they will be shared with every campus to which you’ve applied. Standardized exams will not be used in the application review process.
Do all the UCs look at all 3 GPAs? DS25 is in a similar situation in that he’s taking more A-G classes than just about everyone in his class, when you add it dual enrollment. Takes as many APs as his school allows (2 10th grade, 4 11th grade), they don’t do “honors classeses” because he wants to and the “regular” classes would not provide the rigor he needs. He has plenty of balance even with maxing out rigor at this school-2 varsity sports, works part-time, volunteers, club president, awards, etc.
The only UC he’s interested in is UCSB. Only CSU is Cal Poly. All the rest are OOS.
But, when I calculate his capped, weighted GPA it’s lower because of all the classes. He’s had one B+ in HS, rest are all A/A-, so it’s still quite high. I understand they won’t look at his GPA in a vacuum; I also don’t understand why they do the capped thing if they are also looking at him in the context of his school.
But, maybe there isn’t a reason to overthink it. if they are comparing only the capped weighted GPA to his peers at his school, his will be slightly lower even though he has more rigor. It’s frustrating to try and understand.
Yes, the UC’s look at all 3 UC GPA’s but some campuses specifically state they emphasize the Unweighted and Uncapped weighted UC GPA over the Capped weighted such as UCLA and UC Berkeley.
UCSB admissions stated they only use the Uncapped weighted GPA for statistical purposes so like the majority of the UC’s, they emphasize the Unweighted and Capped weighted.
This is a quote from a current UCSB student whom asked to review their application file:
I was actually told by the office of admissions that UCSB does NOT directly use the uncapped GPA; however they heavily take into account course rigor/number of AP’s etc, and use the uncapped GPA on their website/UC website for statistical purposes.
For Cal Poly SLO, please be aware that they use 9-11th a-g course grades in their GPA calculation with the 8 semester Honors point cap for courses 10-11th grades only so a completely different GPA calculation for this campus only.
The capped weighted GPA is to take into account differences in what the schools offer in terms of UC approved Honors, AP, IB and DE courses. As I stated above it attempts to level the admission playing field for applicants that do not have access to these type of classes. It also determines eligibility for the UC system with a minimum 3.0 required for in-state and 3.4 for OOS/International applicants.
The CSU’s also have a minimum GPA eligibility of 2.5 for in-state residents and non-residents of 3.0.
If the intention is to level the playing field, then the uncapped weighted GPA should not exist. you cannot say it exists to level the playing field, but berkeley uses uncapped weighted GPA anyway.
While I agree with everything that has been said about how the UCs don’t take the capped GPA in a vacuum, there is a school that does and that is SJSU. As far as Computer Science at SJSU goes, my daughter was below the threshold for their acceptance but if she had taken three less classes, she would have been above the threshold. Luckily, they are very upfront about it and we knew this ahead of time, so my daughter did not apply there.
I think Cal Poly SLO has an element of this as well. It is not transparent and while they say they also consider the # of a-g courses, the capped gpa seems to be a big factor.
From my impression with the UCs, they are looking to see you are near the top of your own school’s range (they have a lot of data on CA high schools) and then the holistic review comes in to tip the scale.
