GPA weighing: which scale is best?

Yo, I'm a junior and I've been hearing about weighted and unweighted GPAs, but I'm not sure which one is most important for college applications. Can you guys help me out with the differences between these scales and what colleges prefer to see? Thanks!

Hey there! It's totally normal to be unsure about GPA scales, so don't worry. There are two main GPA scales that high schools often use: unweighted and weighted.

Unweighted GPA scales range from 0 to 4.0. In this system, every class, whether it's an honors, regular, or AP class, has the same maximum score of 4.0 for an A. This means your unweighted GPA solely reflects your performance in terms of letter grades, without factoring in the difficulty of your courses.

Weighted GPA scales, on the other hand, give additional weight to honors, AP, or IB classes, making it possible to have a GPA higher than 4.0. For example, a school might have a weighted scale where an A in an AP or IB class is worth 5.0, while an A in an honors class is worth 4.5, and an A in a regular class is worth 4.0. This system aims to account for the difficulty of the courses you take, rewarding you for challenging yourself with harder classes.

When it comes to college applications, most colleges prefer to evaluate your courses based on how rigorous they were in addition to your grades, so they usually recalculate your GPA using their internal scales. This means that regardless of which scale your school uses, what's more important is the classes you take and the grades you get in them.

The best approach for you would be to focus on balancing your course load with challenging classes appropriate for your academic abilities, while maintaining strong grades. This helps demonstrate to colleges that you have the aptitude to excel in college-level courses, which is ultimately what they want to see.

Keep your transcript and course schedule solid, and you'll be in a good position for college applications. Good luck!