Hi guys, looking at the US admission process, I noticed weighted and unweighted GPAs being mentioned. I converted my NCEA to about 3.4 unweighted GPA. However I believe that while students around me have gotten straight Excellence, I have been doing harder classes including courses of Calculus and Linear Algebra at a university near me in which I have gotten only As in. My lower GPA is a result of my ignorance in year 11 of the importance of holistic academics. My question is how would I convey to Admission Officers that I have been challenging myself and going above and beyond in my subjects, since NZ does not have a weighting process.
Thank you for you help,
Hi - I would say that there are two primary means of doing so on the application. The first is the recommendation letter that is written by your guidance counselor. If you go and talk to your counselor, you can prime them to include this kind of context so that the school can hear from an adult in your life the same ideas you’re conveying here.
The second way to convey it is the Additional Information section on all the U.S. application portals. You can include a paragraph in there discussing the same ideas as above and noting the difficulty of your classwork versus that of your classmates.
Lastly, I would assume that colleges and universities in the U.S. will recognize the difficulty of Calculus and Linear Algebra, especially if they’re taken at a college (there are separate areas where you can acknowledge college coursework).
you can check use this calculator to convert your NCEA credits into US GPA: https://www.crimsoneducation.org/nz/resources/ncea-gpa-calculator-lp/