Will my low A's translate to an A- for colleges?

Answered

You college admissions file will be evaluated in the context of your particular schools grading rubric that your HS counselor will turn over in the form of a School Profile. You will be judged against your peers within your schools grading system and that will either be a plus, minus or neutral.

Where I attend, all our grades are deflated immensely and only 2 students out of 200 have a GPA above 95.00. So suffice it to say that about most of them will apply to Ivy's or Elites with GPAs between 88-92. And high percentage of them will still get admitted even though it defies the marketing literature and published middle stats at each and every one of these schools.

If your school has some form of grade deflation versus inflation like many public schools and 2nd tier privates do, the historical matriculation of your HS will be a better indicator than your individual transcript.

Another way to view your chances is to do an assessment of where you think you stand amongst your peers in your graduating class. If your GPA is in the 1st Quintile, you are a good shape, if you are in the top 10% even better.

Remember, the first set of competition to get into your college of choice will be the very same peers at your school who are going to apply to the same schools. An excellent way to assess the matriculation landscape is to log in to Naviance or a similar repository of student data your HS counselors use. I don't know what system your HS uses. On Naviance, you can look up a college and see how many peers applied to that college going back up to 5 or 6 years and see how many got in. This is very useful information because some colleges favor your HS and other don't care whatsoever. If you don't have access to Naviance, I would set up a meeting with your counselor and show them your college list and ask them how many students matriculated into each of those schools.

I hope my answer was helpful

Good luck.