Unweighted GPA for your college list: how to compare

RReaders in Stanford's admissions office did not take a high school's weighted GPA at face value: they recomputed an unweighted figure and judged the difficulty of a student's courses separately, and many selective colleges work the same way. Most high schools report a weighted GPA, with extra points for honors and AP classes, so a strong student sees a number like 4.38 and feels safe. The family builds a college list on that number and labels a few schools targets, never realizing the colleges are reading a different figure, and anyone who builds a list on the weighted number will misjudge where they stand. That is how a strong student ends up with a list full of reaches she believed were targets. It is avoidable, and the arithmetic is simpler than most families expect.