Even though rank is a flawed system and whatnot…
Would you rather be 1st in an unweighted system or 2nd in a weighted system?
Both systems have their flaws. People can take all regular classes, get all As, and place in the top 10% in an unweighted system. I’m undecided.
I’d rather be second in a weighted system, as long as the class size is very large. It shows evidence for hard coursework. Although, I guess maybe 1st in unweighted because a college can see my coursework.
Natural extension: If you had the ability to choose between the two for scholarships and college applications, which one would you use?
@DigitalKing An unweighted 4.0 looks beautiful, but wouldn’t you have a high weighted GPA if you took hard courses and got all As? (I just confused myself typing this response- just look at it as if you can’t just take 4 APs in high school, get all As and end with a 4.5 cumulative) I’d probably go with 1st in a weighted system.
The essential purpose of weighted GPA is to rank students fairly within a single school, but people discuss it outside this context and it often creates more confusion than it’s worth. For example, people on here will report their weighted GPAs without giving any context, as if these numbers mean anything without knowing how they’re calculated. Other people see weighted grades as a kind of extra credit—they think their 4.5 weighted GPA is “better than perfect” because they’ve taken 4.0 to mean “perfect” regardless of the scale, but obviously colleges won’t see it that way.
Weighted grades allow individual schools to decide which of their classes are hard enough to merit weighting, and this is useful to colleges because it helps them evaluate applicants’ course rigor by looking at which courses were weighted (as opposed to simply looking for AP and honors labeling). One problem, however, is that weighted grades can deter people from taking unweighted art and music classes, as well as dual-enrollment classes in some cases. For example, a student might choose to take AP Statistics rather than a university multivariable calculus course because the latter could lower their class rank if it’s not weighted.
I generally believe that grades and course rigor should be evaluated separately. Honors classes are often harder than regular classes, but we can take that into consideration without trying to quantify it. The valedictorian is the person who gets the best grades, not necessarily the person who achieves the most academically. I don’t think you can discover that person by crunching numbers.