When Vaibhav Bhaskar was in fifth grade, his teacher asked the class to come up with alliterations to put on their name tags: Brilliant Bob, Kind Kailey.

Bhaskar, 17, remembered being stuck. His teacher told him to go with Valedictorian Vaibhav.

He remembered writing the words down.

"It was so big on my name tag, but I didn't even know what it meant," he said. "It's really easy to start chasing something before you even know what it actually means, right?"

So began a quest that landed this year's Steinbrenner High School valedictorian an 11.99 grade point average, believed to be the highest in school history, and likely a district and state record.

For years, Hillsborough County had been an outlier in the way it calculated GPAs, resulting in numbers much higher than in other places in the state and country.

But after years of GPAs climbing so high that colleges began recalculating them to align with other parts of the country, and acknowledging the toll the competitiontakes on students, the district changed the way it calculates GPAs.

That means Bhaskar's GPA might not just be a record. It could also be the last GPA of its kind.

The highest bar

On a traditional 4.0 scale, how is a number like 11.99 even possible?

In a lot of places, it's not.

Hillsborough has traditionally had higher GPAs than the rest of the state because of the formula the district uses.

The 4.0 scale traces to the early 1900s, where letter grades correspond to points: 4 for an A, 3 for a B, 2 for a C, 1 for a D and 0 for an F.

In Hillsborough, the district tacked on extra points for certain high-level classes. For instance, it would add an extra 0.04 points for each district-approved honors course in which a student receives a C or higher, plus an added 0.08 points for every dual enrollment, Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate or Cambridge Advanced International Certificate of Education class.

A student who made straight A's and took a yearlong AP class with the standard number of courses would be eligible for a GPA of up to 4.16. A student taking six AP classes with the same number of courses could earn a GPA of up to 4.96.

This method of calculating GPAs had no cap, and as more students took advanced coursework, the district saw more high-achieving students packing their schedules with more classes than needed to graduate.

When Bhaskar entered high school in 2022, he read a news article stating the highest GPA recorded in the state may have been from a Gaither High student who received an 11.84. He set his mind on beating it.

On a whiteboard in his bedroom, he outlined plans for his weeks and months ahead. He wrote out motivational benchmarks — his courses, his goals and his GPA — and what he needed todo next.

He took dual enrollment courses through the University of Florida and Hillsborough College. He took six AP classes his sophomore year, and eight his junior year. He replaced his lunch period with AP classes. He left during fourth period so he could take more AP classes online at home. His summers were filled with more dual enrollment and online classes through Florida Virtual School.

The credits climbed. Only 24 are needed to earn a high school diploma. Bhaskar graduated with 70.

"Once I got that mindset that, 'OK, I'm gonna be at the top,' I just took advantage of every opportunity I could," he said. "I took all the hardest classes. I kind of exhausted all of my school's curriculum, and saw what I could do beyond that."

Whether he actually set an all-time high, though, is unclear.

District officials said they don't really keep GPA records. A news release announcing this year's valedictorians and GPAs listed Bhaskar as the highest, earning a GPA 0.03 points higher than Middleton High School's valedictorian. Those GPAs were based on a cutoff point before all credits are calculated. The district said it could not say whether Bhaskar's GPA for sureended up higher than anyone else's.

Bhaskar said he maintained a normal teenage life. He founded and led the school's Investment Club, was president of the South Asian Student Association, and captain of Steinbrenner's mock trial team. He volunteered with a student nonprofit that delivered meals to homeless people.

"11.99 sounds ridiculous," he said, "but I did have a lot of time, just hanging out with friends. I enjoyed playing basketball, pickleball anytime I could. That's not to say that I wasn't busy, but I always made time to just have leisure activities."

To his parents, watching their oldest kid work toward his goal was inspiring.

"It was all a new experience for us," his mother, Vidhya Balasubramaniyan, said. "He is the first (child) for us. We didn't know what 'AP' is."

Balasubramaniyan said sometimes she found herself telling him to go easier on himself or trying to console him if things didn't go how he planned.

"I see him, how hard he works, and if (something doesn't) match up, I feel so bad," she said. "But he always pushes himself. I was so proud. We would all try to console him or comfort him, but he was like, 'That's OK, I'll do this way, or I'll do that way.' He was strategically planning."

She said while she was proud of Bhaskar, she doesn't compare him to his brother, who's entering fourth grade.

"Whatever grade he gets, he's happy about it," Balasubramaniyan said, adding she often tells others not to compare their children. "Don't be like Vaibhav. Or be better than him, too."

'Unusually high GPAs'

Starting with incoming freshmen in 2023, Hillsborough shifted the way it calculates GPAs, knocking them down to mirror other districts. Students would now max out at 5.0.

The new structure adds half a point to create a maximum weighted 4.5 scale for honors classes, and a full point to create a maximum weighted 5.0 scale for AP, IP, Cambridge and dual enrollment classes.

A district website explaining the change said the old system of "unusually high GPAs" led to college and university admissions officers having to recalculate GPAs to align them with others.

It also said the old system encouraged high-achieving students to take more courses than needed, "resulting in stressful and unhealthy learning habits and mental health concerns."

In recent years, schools across the country have capped GPAs, and some have eliminated class ranks because of concerns about too much pressure being placed on students in competitive college admissions climates.

Sara Harberson, a college admissions expert and former associate dean of admissions at the University of Pennsylvania, said the meaning of GPAs has changed as districts, and sometimes even schools within them, calculate them differently.

"When I hear of a GPA that high, I have to unpack it," she said. "Most of the selective colleges, both public and private in the U.S., will recalculate the GPA based on what's important to them."

When she worked at Penn, only core academic classes were considered, she said.

College admissions officers often look at a school's profile for more info. They consider standardized test scores and weighted class rank to see how students compare to others in their school. That system, she said, could work in both ways, where a straight-A student at a large high school who hasn't taken extra coursework could rank outside the top 100 in their class, behind students who took more classes than they did.

Steinbrenner High School Principal Tiffany Ewell said Bhaskar was an exception to what often happens with students chasing high GPAs.

"Even though he was so committed to trying to break the record and being our valedictorian, he's still a really well-rounded kid," she said. "He wasn't so consumed by that goal that it became tunnel vision."

Bhaskar plans to attend Duke University, where he hopes to study economics and public policy. He said he's interested in financial policy that helps address economic inequality.

He feels fulfilled having met his goal, he said, but believes GPA is not a full measure of intelligence. He'd rather see students "make a difference in society" with what they learned.

In his valedictorian speech, he told his classmates it was important to pursue goals not just because they looked good, but because they had meaning. Chasing what motivated them is what mattered.

"If the feedback loop disappears," he said, "if no one's keeping score anymore, then the question isn't, 'Are you at the top?' It's 'What are you even playing for?'"

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