Weighted GPAs and Admissions

Applying to College
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Hi Everyone,

I just attended a virtual information session for Miami University. When the conversation turned to merit scholarships, the Miami admissions rep stated that they will use whatever weighted GPA your high school has on the transcript. If your school doesn’t weight GPAs, they will do it. When they showed the different levels of scholarships, the highest level for out of state was starting at 15K if you have a 4.30+ GPA. She clearly stated they use the weighted GPA to determine the award.

My question is about what most schools do. What do most schools do with regards to weighted GPAs sent by high schools? In my son’s case, he’s got a weighted GPA of 4.43 and he would get the 15K or more from Miami, but what about most other schools. I would think it’s a mixed bag depending on the school. I ask because when we look at school profiles and common data sets, there is no mention of weighted or unweighted when they talk about overall applicant GPAs. Obviously, I hope they all use the weighted GPA on the transcript, but I’m not placing any bets on that.

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100% depends on the school for those who have auto merit.

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Seems like if there are many colleges that take high school weighted GPA at face value, that gives incentive for high schools to use very heavy weighting (e.g. +2 weighting for many classes). Students from South Carolina (where heavy weighting is the standard may find their GPAs to be advantageous at those colleges that take weighted GPA at face value.

However, many colleges recalculate unweighted, or weighted using their own system, GPAs, so the high school weighted GPA is irrelevant to them. Some others with holistic admission reading just look at the high school record holistically without recalculating.

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