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Do Colleges Use Weighted or Unweighted GPAs?
By
Will Geiger
Will Geiger is the co-founder of Scholarships360 and has a decade of experience in college admissions and financial aid. He is a former Senior Assistant Director of Admissions at Kenyon College where he personally reviewed 10,000 admissions applications and essays. Will also managed the Kenyon College merit scholarship program and served on the financial aid appeals committee. He has also worked as an Associate Director of College Counseling at a high school in New Haven, Connecticut. Will earned his master’s in education from the University of Pennsylvania and received his undergraduate degree in history from Wake Forest University.
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Varonika Ware is a content writer at Scholarships360. Varonika earned her undergraduate degree in Mass Communications at Louisiana State University. During her time at LSU, she worked with the Center of Academic Success to create the weekly Success Sunday newsletter. Varonika also interned at the Louisiana Department of Insurance in the Public Affairs office with some of her graphics appearing in local news articles.
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Bill Jack has over a decade of experience in college admissions and financial aid. Since 2008, he has worked at Colby College, Wesleyan University, University of Maine at Farmington, and Bates College.
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Maria Geiger is Director of Content at Scholarships360. She is a former online educational technology instructor and adjunct writing instructor. In addition to education reform, Maria’s interests include viewpoint diversity, blended/flipped learning, digital communication, and integrating media/web tools into the curriculum to better facilitate student engagement. Maria earned both a B.A. and an M.A. in English Literature from Monmouth University, an M. Ed. in Education from Monmouth University, and a Virtual Online Teaching Certificate (VOLT) from the University of Pennsylvania.
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Most high school students will have both a weighted and an unweighted GPA. But what do colleges and scholarships care more about? This is an important question and valuable for students to understand as they navigate high school curriculum choices as well as the admissions and scholarship application process.
Related: High school and college GPA guide
Jump ahead to:
- What is the difference between a weighted and an unweighted GPA?
- How do you calculate your weighted GPA?
- How do you calculate your unweighted GPA?
- Do colleges look at weighted or unweighted GPA?
- Key takeaways for students
Keep on reading to learn about the differences between weighted and unweighted GPA, how to calculate your GPA, and why this matters for you as a student!
See also: What GPA do you need to get a full scholarship?
What’s the difference between weighted and unweighted GPA?
Grade Point Average (GPA) is the normal metric that students use to assess their academic performance. However, one of the limitations of GPA is that it doesn’t consider the rigor of the classes that you have taken.
For instance, if your high school offers honors and AP courses, shouldn’t that be considered?
That’s why schools generally have two different GPAs for students: weighted and unweighted GPAs.
Weighted GPA
Weighted GPAs take the rigor of the classes that you have taken into account and then award additional points for students who have taken advanced classes. These advanced classes can include Advanced Placement (AP), honors, International Baccalaureate (IB), and accelerated classes (these specific designations will vary from school to school).
Unweighted GPA
Unweighted GPA is less complicated as it is just your ordinary GPA. An unweighted GPA will not give extra weight for any advanced classes that you might take.
See also: What is a good class rank?
How do you calculate your weighted GPA?
Now you might be wondering: “How do I calculate my weighted GPA?”
This process will vary from school to school, but we can give some examples of how certain schools calculate weighted GPAs. At high schools that calculate GPA on a 100 point scale, an advanced class may add 7 points to your grade (so a 90 in AP Chemistry would be weighted to a 97).
At schools that calculate GPA on a 4.0 scale, an advanced class may add .3 points so the highest possible GPA is a 4.3 and not a 4.0.
The GPA formula used really depends on your high school, therefore, we suggest that you reach out to your guidance counselor or academic adviser for details.
How do you calculate your unweighted GPA?
Unweighted GPAs are much easier to calculate, because that is the regular GPA that you probably see on your transcript. An unweighted GPA will simply be all of your classes and grades without the weighting.
Do colleges look at weighted or unweighted GPA?
On college and scholarship applications, you will likely find questions about your GPA. Ideally, these questions will specify whether they want you to include your weighted GPA or your unweighted GPA.
If the application does not specify which GPA, your default should be to list your weighted GPA as it is higher.
However, don’t forget that a GPA is not all that colleges and scholarships will care about. Selection committees will also be interested in the difficulty of your classes. After all, a 4.0 unweighted GPA is very different if one student earned this in all AP and honors classes and another student only took the minimum college prep curriculum.
See also: Ultimate Guide to Self-Studying for AP Exams
Some colleges may also recalculate your GPA themselves. When I worked in college admissions, part of our review process included the manual recalculation of every single student’s GPA. When doing this manual recalculation, we did not consider “non-academic” classes (the only exceptions were art and music classes at the AP or IB level). This meant that the only classes that were calculated into the GPA were English, history, social science, math, foreign language, and science.
However, every review process is going to be different, and it is not possible to assess how every college or scholarship will be processing your transcript.
Learn more: What are extracurricular activities and why do they matter?
Key Takeaways
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- Vetted scholarships custom-matched to your profile
- Access exclusive scholarships only available to Scholarships360 members
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Frequently asked questions about weighted and unweighted GPAs
Which type of GPA is more common?
How do colleges and universities consider weighted and unweighted GPAs in admissions?
Is weighted or unweighted GPA better?
