Will colleges I apply to convert my weighted GPA?Answered
Hello!
I am currently a junior in high school. I have a current unweighted cumulative GPA of 3.24. This GPA, when weighted, is 3.41. This current GPA only accounts for my freshman and sophomore year, mind you. Worrying about the strength of my GPA, I asked my counselors their process of sending scores to admission offices in the colleges I wish to apply to. My counselors have told me that my school only sends weighted GPA scores to colleges.
That being said, I am wondering if colleges may convert my weighted score to an unweighted score, which may decrease my chances of being accepted. Is conversion a normal practice that every admission offices use? Will they ask me my unweighted score?
Many thanks!
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1 answer
There is no definitive answer to your question. Some schools like the UC system colleges recalculate your transcript as a UC GPA. Stanford for example recalc's your GPA as an unweighted GPA throwing out 9th grade and only focusing on grades 10th grade forward. And yet other schools may recalc. your GPA back to a base UWGPA and others will just look at what your counselors submit.
The important thing most HS students neglect to realize is that your immediate competition are other students in your school applying to the same schools and secondarily students in your school district also applying to the same schools. If you have a better application than Jack or Jill applying to the same schools, you will have an advantage over them. The opposite will be true if your narrative is not as strong. You can either ask your counselor to give you some stats on which students got into the schools you are applying to or if your school uses Naviance or a similar type of college admissions aggregator portal, then you can look up the stats typical for Admission, Wait-list or Rejection to the schools you are applying to.
If neither of these resources are available, then research the Common Data Sets for each of the colleges you are applying to. They will have admit stats like 50% SAT or ACT scores, avg. GPA, acceptance rates and financial aid averages.
Good luck,
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Thank you so very much. My school does have Naviance, so I am able to see the GPA's and SAT scores of classmates who have applied to the colleges of my interests. Very helpful to know the average percentage of rejections/acceptances/etc.