Wed, NOV 5, 2025 11:30 AM
A student’s weighted GPA is the extra bump they receive for taking Honors, Dual Enrollment, Advanced Placement (AP), or International Baccalaureate (IB) courses. This means a student’s GPA can be greater than the regular unweighted GPA which is usually measured on a 4.0 scale. Depending upon the college, this GPA bump can make a difference in your students’ chances of getting admitted and receiving top scholarship awards.
When researching which colleges your student is considering applying to, it is important to identify whether or not they accept a weighted or unweighted GPA for admissions or scholarship consideration or both. Also remember that high schools only send out a student’s transcript showing grades from the beginning of their freshman to the end of their junior year. This is especially relevant for colleges that have binding Early Decision (ED) and non-binding Early Action (EA) deadlines in the fall of their senior year with EA deadlines often required for scholarship consideration as well.
Regardless of whether a college accepts a student’s weighted or unweighted GPA, they definitely look to see if you daughter or son have pushed themselves academically throughout their high school career. Colleges also review the rigor of the courses taken compared to what their high school offers (number of AP’s and IB’s for example) and the difficulty of the subjects they have taken in previous years. This type of information is shared by each high school on their Profile Letter which is often sent with the Official Transcript to colleges.
For students who may have had a rough freshman year grade wise as they transitioned into high school, colleges are going to be looking for a steady improvement in grades over their sophomore and junior years. This is especially true when colleges are considering your student for admissions and deciding if they believe your son or daughter can handle the rigor of their academic college curriculum.
Be sure to check each college’s website to confirm how they handle weighted or unweighted GPAs and do your research on how your son or daughter compares to other incoming freshman so they can pick the right colleges to apply to in the future.
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