There are various totally different ways in which college students are assessed on the knowledge that they study in a specific class. In some courses, chances are you’ll obtain a cross or fail, whereas in different courses there is no such thing as a grading in any respect.
Nevertheless, most highschool and faculty courses are evaluated when it comes to a letter grade, typically from A to F.
Every letter grade could be transformed to a numeric worth and when averaged collectively make up what’s known as a Grade Level Common, or GPA.
As a result of it is useful to know how GPA works as you progress in your educational profession, this put up explores the other ways GPA is calculated: Weighted vs. Unweighted GPA, and Cumulative GPA.
What Is Unweighted GPA?
The only sort of GPA to contemplate is your unweighted GPA. Your unweighted GPA solely takes into consideration the precise grades that you simply obtain in every class. You then convert every letter grade right into a numeric worth.
Sometimes an A is price 4 factors, a B is price 3 factors, and so forth, with plus and minus grades receiving a barely larger or decrease rating. From there, multiply every numeric grade worth by the whole variety of credit to get your unweighted GPA.
This is an instance of a pattern faculty semester that can hopefully make calculating your weighted GPA simpler to know:
With 53.1 GPS factors and 16 complete credit taken, this pupil’s GPA for the semester is 3.32. It is also essential to notice that even with an unweighted GPA, you continue to weight the grades that you simply obtain by the whole variety of credit that every class is price. It’s thought of unweighted as a result of you don’t alter the numeric GPA factors that you simply obtain for the problem of the category.
What Is Weighted GPA?
Whereas unweighted GPAs are frequent in faculty and different larger training faculties, many excessive faculties select a weighted GPA. It’s because there are a lot of totally different ranges of programs in most excessive faculties, and the workload could be considerably totally different. Most excessive faculties have determined that college students shouldn’t be punished for taking a tougher class (and presumably getting a decrease grade than they’d have in a extra primary model of the category)
Whereas every faculty can calculate weighted GPA in no matter method they select, one frequent system is so as to add 1.0 level to the numeric worth that you simply earn for those who’re taking an Superior Placement (AP) class and 0.5 factors for those who’re taking an Honors class. If you happen to take a normal highschool class, your numeric grade isn’t modified.
This is an instance of a pattern highschool pupil’s semester grade, utilizing a weighted GPA and a 1.0 / 0.5 adjustment for AP and Honors courses.
On this instance, has 23.0 GPA factors and 5.5 credit, for a GPA of 4.18. It’s often through Honors and AP courses that you simply may see college students with GPAs above 4.0. Sometimes unweighted GPAs can’t be larger than 4.0.
What Is Cumulative GPA?
One other GPA time period is cumulative GPA. Your cumulative GPA represents your complete GPA over the sequence of a number of totally different phrases or semesters, and could be weighted or unweighted. To calculate your cumulative GPA, you merely add up all the GPA factors that you have gathered whereas attending this explicit faculty, and divide it by the whole variety of credit that you have earned.
It is also essential to notice which you can’t simply take the common of every of your semester GPAs. As a result of you might have a unique quantity of credit earned every semester, taking a easy common of the GPAs from particular person semesters is not going to produce an correct cumulative GPA. As an alternative, you should add up the whole variety of GPA factors you’ve got earned and divide that by your complete variety of credit earned.
Abstract
As you may see, most colleges calculate your grade level common (GPA) as a method of evaluating your efficiency within the courses that you simply take, however there are a number of totally different types of GPA. An unweighted GPA does not take note of the problem of the category, whereas a weighted GPA could give extra credit score for taking superior courses.
Final however not least, there’s the cumulative GPA, which represents your performance-to-date throughout a number of totally different semesters or phrases. No matter the kind of GPA calculation that is used, doing all your greatest in all your courses will assist to maintain your GPA excessive.
