the school's database may not store strings like "A", "B+", etc. I'd guess it stores grade points, which can be more directly used to calculate GPA. so at schoo

the school's database may not store strings like "A", "B+", etc. I'd guess it stores grade points, which can be more directly used to calculate GPA. so at schools where A is the highest grade, it is already represented by 4.0. it's probably more trouble than it's worth to accommodate values outside this range just to symbolically correct a grade several decades later.