UVA GPA Recalculation

dowzerw
Tue, 08 Sep 2015 23:40:44 +0000

@Gatortristan @DeanJ I apologize for any confusion. Dean, your blog information is fine. I wanted to make sure readers did not misinterpret what @northwesty wrote above: “UVA pretty much ignores the stated GPA on the HS transcript. They do their own analysis to score…” to mean that UVA recalculates GPA. That is not what you or northwesty meant to convey but I felt it could be misinterpreted. I do know it is one of those misunderstanding folks have in general-that colleges recalculate GPAs when looking at applications.

This is a particular sore spot in my family because our children have attended a number of different schools with varying grading policies-some use a 7 point scale, some use a 10 point scale, some give a boost for honors and AP courses, others give a different boost or NO boost. My kids could have taken the same exact course (let’s say an AP since those have fairly standard curricula) and earned significantly different GPAs though the same grade.

At one school, a 92 in the course could be a B+ which is a 3.7. That school gives no boost for it being an AP course. The next child takes the same course. They also earn a 92. Their school grades on a 10 point scale so that is an A. That school gives a full 1 point boost for an AP course so that student earns a 5.0. 5.0 vs 3.7. Same course, same success in learning the material, different grading valuations. I wouldn’t advocate for colleges to recalculate to try to level GPAs because it is just not realistic to do, but if an admissions counselor had to choose between the student who earned a 3.7 and a student who earned a 5.0, ASSUMING THE TWO APPLICANTS OTHERWISE HAVE THE EXACT SAME PROFILE, there is no way the 5.0 would not prevail.

So it is a potentially sensitive topic and important to have an accurate understanding of how a school deals with the issue.