An unweighted GPA treats every class the same. An A is 4.0 whether it's in AP Chemistry or ceramics. A weighted GPA gives extra points for harder classes, so an A in an AP or honors course can be worth 4.5, 5.0 or more, and the GPA can rise above 4.0.
That's the difference in one paragraph. The details are where students get caught out: how much extra a class earns, whether a plus grade counts, which number your school reports, and which one a college actually reads.
Note that this page is about GPA. "Weighted grades" inside a single class, where the final counts for 35% and homework for 20%, is a different thing, covered at the end and handled by the weighted grade calculator.
Unweighted GPA
An unweighted GPA is the plain 4.0 scale. Each letter grade has a fixed value, A 4.0, B 3.0, C 2.0, D 1.0, F 0, and the average is taken across your classes, weighted only by credits.
Broward County Public Schools in Florida spells out what that means in practice. Its unweighted GPA gives no additional points for rigorous coursework and none for plus grades, and it's the GPA used for graduation (a 2.0 minimum) and athletic eligibility.
That's typical. The unweighted number is the one that answers "how strong are the grades" with nothing else mixed in. The GPA calculator works on this scale.
Weighted GPA
A weighted GPA adds quality points for courses judged more demanding: honors, Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, AICE and dual enrollment. The size of the bonus is set by the school or district, and it varies a lot.
Broward's course agreement adds one quality point for honors courses and two for AP, IB, AICE and dual enrollment, as long as the grade is a C or better, and adds half a point for a plus grade on the weighted scale only. So at Broward an A is 4.0 unweighted, 5.0 in an honors class and 6.0 in an AP class.
The University of Arizona's college planning guide describes another common pattern: honors classes counting an A as 4.5 and AP or dual enrollment classes counting it as 5.0.
Some states are standardizing this. Texas now requires districts to use a single statewide method for computing high school GPA, which under Texas Education Code section 28.0252 must give equal weight to AP, IB, OnRamps and dual credit courses. Until that change, districts there set their own.
The upshot: a weighted GPA of 4.6 from one school and 4.6 from another may not mean the same thing, because the bonus behind them was different.
The same transcript, both ways
Four classes, one semester, each worth one credit. The weighting here follows the common honors 4.5 and AP 5.0 pattern.
| Class | Grade | Unweighted | Weighted |
|---|---|---|---|
| AP Biology | A | 4.0 | 5.0 |
| Honors English | B | 3.0 | 3.5 |
| Algebra II | A | 4.0 | 4.0 |
| Art | B | 3.0 | 3.0 |
| GPA | 3.50 | 3.88 |
Term and cumulative GPA on the 4.0 scale.
Same grades, same student, 3.50 or 3.88 depending on which number you're looking at. Neither is wrong. They measure different things: the unweighted GPA measures the grades, the weighted GPA measures the grades and the difficulty of the schedule together.
Which one do colleges use?
Mostly the unweighted one, or their own version of it. The College Board explains that colleges may recalculate an applicant's GPA using their own criteria, which can include removing non-core courses and adjusting or removing the weighting for AP and honors so that applicants from different schools are compared on the same scale. The Arizona guide is blunter: most colleges evaluate a student's unweighted grades on the 4.0 scale regardless of the type of class.
That doesn't mean the harder classes don't count. Admissions offices look at course rigor separately, on the transcript itself. They just don't want it baked into the number, because every school bakes it in differently.
Two practical consequences:
- When a college publishes an average admitted GPA, it's almost always unweighted. Comparing your weighted 4.4 against it flatters you.
- On an application, report the GPA exactly as your transcript states it, in whichever field matches how your school reports. Don't convert it yourself. The college will.
Weighted grades: the other meaning
"Weighted grades" also describes how a single class grade is built. Instead of averaging every score equally, the instructor gives each category a weight, so the final might count for a third of the grade while homework counts for a fifth. A 90 on the final moves your grade far more than a 90 on a homework set.
That has nothing to do with AP bonuses. It's the normal way most college and high school classes are graded, and the college grading system page walks through the calculation. The weighted grade calculator does it for your own categories, and if you leave the weights blank it gives a plain unweighted average of the scores instead.
So "unweighted" can mean two things too: a GPA with no bonus for rigor, or a class average where every assignment counts equally.
How to calculate each one
Unweighted GPA: the standard credit-weighted average on the 4.0 scale. The GPA calculator does it, and the method and charts are on the GPA scale page.
Weighted GPA: the same, but first add your school's bonus to each qualifying class before you multiply. If honors adds 0.5 and AP adds 1.0, an A in AP goes in as 5.0. Because the bonus is school-specific, use the values from your own handbook, not a generic chart.
To go from weighted to unweighted, strip the bonus and recalculate, so an A in AP counts as 4.0 again. That's the number a college is most likely to be looking at, and the one worth knowing before you compare yourself to an admitted-student average. If your school uses PowerSchool, our guide to checking your GPA on PowerSchool explains which GPA it shows.