top of page
Numbers Game

Unweighted vs Weighted GPA

When I first started researching for college admissions, this topic was confusing and I did not find easy answers to Weighted GPA Vs Unweighted GPA.

​

Hopefully this section will answer all your questions on this topic.

​

Unweighted GPA:


This is the standard and simplest form of calculating GPA. Each course can have up to 4 points. Typically the GPA for a given subject is calculated as below:

89.5% + : GPA = 4. This includes grades of A-, A, A+

79.5% + to 89.5% : GPA = 3. This includes grades of B-, B, B+

69.5% + to 79.5%: GPA = 2. This includes grades of C-, C, C+


The GPA that matters for college admission is the cumulative GPA until the end of junior year. In other words, 6 semesters cumulative GPA is taken into consideration.


The cumulative GPA is a simple average of GPAs for each semester.


Below is an example of how the calculation works. The cumulative unweighted GPA used by college admissions is:  (3.67 + 4 + 3.34 + 3 + 3.5 + 3.5)/6 = 3.5

UnweightedGPA.png

​

Weighted GPA:


Weighted GPA is a little more complicated. There are 2 dimensions to understand in this context:


Which subjects are treated differently between weighted and unweighted?


Honors and AP courses get counted differently while calculating weighted GPA


How is the weighted GPA calculated?


For every Honors and AP course,  0.22 is added to the final GPA of that particular semester. This gives Weighted GPA for each semester. Then the weighted GPA of all the 6 semesters is averaged to calculate the cumulative Weighted GPA.

​

Below is an example of how the calculation works:

WeightedGPA.png

The Weighted GPA for each semester is calculated by adding 0.88 (0.22*4) to the Unweighted GPA. The reason is, there are 4 Honors/AP courses taken each semester. Please note that I have taken a simple assumption that each year the same number of honors/AP courses are taken. However, this may change each year based on the subjects registered each year.

​

The cumulative Weighted GPA used by college admissions is:  (4.55 + 4.88 + 4.22 + 3.88 + 4.38 + 4.38)/6 = 4.38

​

Some observations:

​

The first 2 points below are facts. The last 3 are based on my experience. Follow them only if they make sense to you!

​

  1. If a student takes no honors/AP courses, then both Weighted and Unweighted GPA will be the same.

  2. As you can see, the more Honors/AP courses are taken, the higher the Weighted GPA is. This is the reason why many colleges look at Weighted GPA as it is a demonstration of the number of difficult courses a student has taken. For example, Georgia Tech has a 75 percentile Weighted GPA target of 4.02

  3. Students and parents should not blindly go for maximum honors/AP courses. This can potentially back-fire if the students ends up getting poor grades. Not only does this impact the GPA, more importantly it has a significant impact on the students morale and motivation.

  4. Don’t get over obsessed with Straight As (honestly speaking, I was obsessed with it). This puts unnecessary pressure on yourself and again more importantly on the child. At the end of the day it is not "end of the world" if the child has some Bs or Cs. GPA is only one of many parameters that colleges look for.

  5. Talk to your child if they are really interested in a particular subject before signing up for AP. For example, I have seen many students who think "IT IS MANDATORY" to take AP US History. There are some students, like my daughter, who hate History. In such cases, it is better to "break the norm" and take a normal course instead of pushing your child through a year of torture taking a rigorous AP class when they are not at all interested in that subject.

bottom of page