For Liberty students and rising seniors who are now starting to apply to colleges in the summer and fall, one tedious task is inputting your grades from freshman to senior year. 

Whether it is making calculations or entering your grades into Common App, students have consistently discussed the topic of unweighted GPAs (grade point average) and the complications that come with it.  A weighted GPA focuses on course difficulty rather than giving the same letter grade to convert their GPA to every student.

Liberty College and Career Specialist Becky Watchman has an explanation for this process. 

“Typically, the reason why students are required to enter all their grades into Common App is because colleges have a specific algorithm to calculate a weighted GPA for their system,” Watchman said. 

For many students, this can be a time-consuming process, since they have  to enter all of their grades from freshman to senior year. 

“It took a while. I had to go in and write out all my classes. Then, after I finished that I had to put in all the grades. It would have been way simpler just to attach a transcript instead,” senior Michael Keyes said. 

Those applying to college who are entering their grades can also come across other issues. 

“It was extremely tedious and nerve wracking because it’s so easy to accidentally input the wrong information. The college process is already so stressful that you don’t want a small detail to throw off your application,” senior Anjali Dixit said. 

There are still benefits to this process. Many feel that the weighted GPA can help strengthen their application. Having a weighted GPA is beneficial for you because it rewards you for taking harder classes by having a higher GPA on your transcript. However, having an unweighted weighted GPA, as Liberty does, makes calculations for your transcript a smoother process. 

“I personally think weighted GPA is a good thing. Students that do more challenging classes should get better rewarded and those challenging classes should be emphasized in one’s GPA,” Keyes said. 

If you feel the need to calculate your weighted gpa because Liberty does not account for one, there are many resources online that can help you process your grades to help you with the college application process.