Starting in the fall, Fraser High School will go from unweighted to weighted GPA.. Accelerated, AP, and Butcher students have the opportunity to get a GPA higher than a 4.0.

Some of the Butcher and AP classes will have a maximum of a 5.0 GPA, while other accelerated and advanced classes will be able to get a maximum of a 4.5 GPA.

One reason Fraser High School decided to make this change was because of the competition of finding scholarships. Many colleges use a student’s high school GPA to see if they are eligible for a scholarship or not. Most high schools uses a weighted GPA, making it more difficult for Fraser students to compete with them and not considered.

“It will give students better opportunities to find good scholarships,” said Stephanie Kepler, the AP English 11 teacher.

Another reason for the change is to help encourage students into taking challenging courses and hopefully have an increase of students in AP.

“I think there will be an increase of AP enrollment, because students are afraid of taking harder classes because it will hurt their GPA, but by changing to weighted GPAs can encourage students to take those classes and won’t have to worry about hurting their GPA, “ said Kepler

This new change has created a buzz among a few of the students, some of them thinking it’s not good and doesn’t benefit them,

“It’s kind of dumb and it doesn’t benefit me, “Said Matthew Cole, a Junior that has been taking mulitple accelerated classes for the past 2 years in school, “I already took so many accelerated classes, but it won’t be counted towards my GPA which sucks.”

Some juniors agree that it doesn’t benefit them, but many still think it will be helpful.

“It can help for like Senior year. Also it might not have a huge affect for me but it will be helpful with newer students like freshman and sophmores,” saids Savannah Danis, another Junior that has took some accelerated classes.

The change will be put in place for the 2019-2020 year, and hopefully encourage students to take on the challenging courses.