Which GPA do colleges look at?
The school that I go to has 3 different GPA's. One is the Eligibility (includes all classes as well as PE), the other is Academic GPA (All courses except Phys. Education, and AP classes are weighted at 5.0) and the last is the Unweighted GPA (All courses are weighted on a 4.0 scale including AP classes, and does not include Phys. Education). My reason for asking is that I am not strong in PE, if I get lucky I can get around a B. I want to get into a well to do college, so my first question is which GPA will a college be looking at, and if I happen to get a 3.8 because of PE then how does that affect my chances of going to a good college if academically I'm very strong and have done a lot of volunteer work but couldn't pull off an A in PE for my first 2 years of high school. Any answer is highly appreciated! Thank you!
Comments
Different colleges look at different kinds of GPAs. most state universities will look at your weighted GPA. Private colleges may create a separate transcript from your unweighted transcript, in which they may exclude non essentials such as PE, non core subjects and even your freshman grades. Then they may look at your junior year separately, to see how many AP classes and Honors courses you took. Then, they may compare your grades on these Honors and AP classes to your AP Test scores and SAT Subject Test scores etc before making a final decision on whether they feel you are competent in those subjects or not.
So, as a general rule, if your weighted GPA/ class rank is really high stick to state universities. However, if you took a lot of AP courses, challenged yourself, got some Bs, but did really well on AP Tests and the SAT Subject tests, then apply to the Privates. Good luck.
I'm pretty sure its the weighted G.P.A.