Grades and GPA
Your grades are probably the most important part of your college application. If you want to pursue a career that requires college, work hard now to get the grades!
What do colleges look for on your transcript?
-
Good grades, of course! The UNC System requires a 2.5 GPA or higher. Really competitive colleges will look for mostly A's and B's, with more A's than B's. All of your grades count, starting freshman year!
-
Growth in academic performance. If your grades from freshman year are not so hot, but you show improvement and keep your grades up in following years, that can help you out!
-
Challenging coursework. Not only do colleges want to see good grades, but they want to see good grades in hard classes. They also want to see that your are motivated to challenge yourself. You can show this by taking honors classes, AP classes, IB classes and/or CCP classes.
-
A strong GPA. Your GPA represents your average grades. The more consistently good your grades are, the higher your GPA. Doing well in honors, AP, IB, or CCP classes can boost your GPA.
What is GPA?
Your GPA is your Grade Point Average, or the average of all your high school grades. Here's how it is calculated:
-
For every class you take in high school, your final letter grade is converted to a number between 0.0 and 4.0
-
A --> 4.0​
-
B --> 3.0
-
C --> 2.0
-
D --> 1.0
-
F --> 0.0
-
-
For an honors class, add an additional 0.5 points. (If you get a B in an honors class, you get 3.5 points. If you get an A in an honors class, you get 4.5 points.)
-
For an AP, IB, or CCP class, add an additional 1.0 points. (If you get a B in an AP or CCP class, you get 4.0 points. If you get an A, you get 5.0 points)
-
Once each class has a numerical score assigned to it, the scores from all of your classes are averaged to give your overall, weighted GPA.
-
You can easily calculate your own GPA. You can even try averaging in expected grades to predict how your GPA might change.
What is a "good" GPA?
The GPA that you should aim for depends on which colleges you are interesting in attending. For example, check out the average range (middle 50%) of GPA's for students accepted to the following colleges and universities. Having a GPA within a college's average range may mean that you are a good fit for that school! However, colleges still admit many students with GPA's lower than their average range, especially if they have great essays or are very involved outside of class.
Appalachian State University 3.9 - 4.4
Campbell University 3.2 - 3.8
East Carolina University 3.6 - 4.1
Methodist University 3.4 - 3.7
NC A&T State University 3.3 - 3.7
NC State University 4.3 - 4.8
UNC Chapel Hill 4.4 - 4.8
UNC Charlotte 3.8 - 4.5
UNC Pembroke 3.2 - 3.6
UNC Wilmington 3.8 - 4.4