Colleges Evaluating GPA

When colleges evaluate applications for students there are a great deal of factors they take into consideration.  One of the aspects they look at is the student's grade point average (GPA).  I already talked about how GPA's are calculated at WKHS last month, but did you know that many colleges unweight your GPA?  College admissions officers look at the school profile submitted with each application to make sure they have an idea of how your GPA stands up to other students from WKHS, but that only helps them gather an idea about you as a Kilbourne student.  It is hard for colleges to figure out how to compare the grade point averages for students from different high schools because each high school determines their own system for calculating GPA's.  For example, at WKHS we weight grades for AP, IB, and CC+ courses, but other schools might weight grades for honors classes as well and yet another school may not give extra weight to any classes.  

Additionally, some schools calculate different GPA levels for grades with plusses/ minuses - so a B+, a B and a B- each have a different weight while others (like Kilbourne) do not compute plusses/ minuses as being different than a standard grade - a B in the example mentioned.  As a result, many colleges will look at the high school transcripts and re-calculate the grade point average based upon their own system so that they are comparing the GPA's on the same scale.  

Please know that not every college will recalculate and unweight your GPA - it depends on their own policies and procedures.  If you have questions about if colleges will recalculate your GPA or not you can always ask the admissions office.