Vaibhav Bhaskar scored so high that the authorities changed the grading system.
An Indian-American student broke the Florida high school class record with an 11.99 GPA, but the impossible feat shifted administrators’ focus to the unhealthy race they had created, overwhelming students with stress.
17-year-old Vaibhav Bhaskar graduated from Steinbrenner High School with an 11.99 GPA. The ideal unweighted GPA is 4.0. The previous record for highest GPA from Hillsborough County was 11.84 in 2022.“Maybe who knows if the previous record was 12.84, maybe I could add 12.99, which shows that we’ve already put these limits on our goals, but I think no goal is really out of reach,” Vaibhav said on Florida Matters Live & Local.
Vaibhav took 20 AP classes, and 23 dual enrollment classes
To reach this goal, he took 20 AP classes during his four years as well as 24 dual enrollment classes at Hillsborough College and the University of Florida. He also founded an investment club at his school because he is passionate about money and economics. He was even the president of the South Asian Students Union and captain of the school’s mock trial team.“I was just a regular kid in high school,” he said. “I enjoy learning so much and taking these classes has kind of led to that, pushing myself out of my comfort zone.”
“I have a whiteboard in my room, and on it I listed five goals for my high school career when I was a sophomore,” Bhaskar told the New York Post, adding that his main goals were “to become valedictorian” and “break the state GPA record.”
Interested in mathematics and economics, Bhaskar wants to run for president one day
With his headline-grabbing government record and positive policy change, Bhaskar is headed to Duke University to pursue a double major in economics and public policy. He said he chose Duke because he likes the sports culture there and its good programs.
Bhaskar said he might consider running for president and wants to make a positive change in the world.His father, Bhaskar Malayappan, said there was no pressure on Vaibhav to excel. “We didn’t force him to read or do that many laps. For example, we have a train track. So we laid the foundation, and this is the train, and it went at its own speed and we didn’t control its speed at all,” he explained.
Is it possible to score an 11.99 GPA?
Hillsborough County school officials praised Bhaskar’s accomplishment, but said no student should be able to compile an 11.99 GPA.
Director Tiffany Ewell said the policy has now changed.Many schools did not have a GPA cap, and students like Vaibhav did their best to achieve the highest GPAs. To combat this, many districts, such as the Palm Beach School System, have switched to an honor point average (HPA) system, which averages grades rather than stacking them. Bhaskar said he supports moving to a standardized approach, restricting GPA to a five-point scale.
“I actually completely agree with the change because it is a more standardized way of calculating GPA,” he said.
“My GPA of 11.99 on our district scale probably translates to 4.93 on the standard 5.0 scale,” he noted.Bhaskar said the old scale certainly had a certain novelty as 11.99 seemed much better than 4.93.He said he wouldn’t describe himself as burned out, but he was definitely tired and after he graduated he slept a lot. “It almost felt surreal because I didn’t have anything left to do.”
