Ever since I have been at UGA (18 years or so), we have added .5 to every AP or IB grade during the calculation of the UGA GPA (excluding schools who add points to actual teacher grades on the transcript). In a review of the weighting practices of a large number of high schools with which we work, we have seen a growing trend of schools adding 7 to 10 points to every AP/IB teacher grade, so that an 85 in AP Biology becomes a 92 or 95 on the actual transcript. In light of these changing high school policies, UGA is changing the weighting policy for the applicant pool for 2016 and beyond and will be adding 1 point to each AP/IB grade in our calculation of a GPA (still excluding schools who add points to actual teacher grades on the transcript, where we will just use their weighted teacher grades). In practice, this means that if a student makes a B in AP Biology, this would count as a 4.0 (3.0 + 1.0) in our GPA calculation process.
The University of Georgia values students challenging themselves in rigorous high school courses, as the best way to prepare yourself for college courses is to challenge yourself in the high school classroom. We encourage students to take the strongest courses possible in which they can still be successful, and we want to recognize this in how we calculate a GPA. We will continue to add weight only to AP or IB grades, as these are nationally and internationally standardized. We will also continue to review the strength of every applicant’s curriculum within the context of their school’s offerings separate from our GPA calculation, where we will review all core courses a student takes, be they AP, IB, Honors, DE, Accelerated, CP, etc.
While this is not a huge change, and the past policy of adding .5 for every AP/IB grade worked very well, we felt making this change would help address the growing shift in grade policies by a number of high schools.
Go Dawgs!