Throughout high school, everyone stresses your grade point average (GPA) as a large part of your college admissions process. While this is absolutely true, many students and parents do not realize not all grades are created equal. Colleges and universities look at your grade point average differently than your high school. In this post, I want to demystify some of the myths (if you even knew there were any!) about a student’s GPA and how colleges use them.
Words to know for this post:
Unweighted– this simply means the student does not get any extra points for more rigorous courses like honors, dual enrollment, Advanced Placement, and so forth. An A in PE would be the same as AP Human Geography.
Weighted– this GPA takes into account a student’s rigor. More points are awarded for more rigorous courses. The more rigor, the more points. Student class rankings are often determined off of this.
Academic Core- These include all courses taken in English, Social Studies, Mathematics, Sciences, and Foreign Language.
Academic Electives- This is sort of a grey area in college admissions. These are courses that students elected to take but are more academic; examples would be Psychology, Human Geography, Speech. Typically these courses are included in the recalculation.
Electives- Electives are the courses that do not fall in the core. These include classes like physical education, computer, business, arts, study hall, and so forth.
