<p>PVP’s method of calculating weighted GPA (adding on an additional .2 per weighted course to the unweighted GPA) works out to the same thing as the usual method of weighting (adding an extra point then averaging)…IF there are five courses a semester. Since PVP calculates an academics-only GPA excluding PE/sports teams, that’s how they came up with the number.</p>
<p>Under this system, a student with six courses, all B grades, 2 APs, would have an unweighted GPA of 3.0. To get the weighted, add another .4 (2 x 0.2) to get a weighted GPA of 3.4. </p>
<p>PVP isn’t the only school district in California using this system. It’s an odd system, a holdover from the days when weighted GPAs couldn’t be easily calculated en masse by whatever software schools already had on hand. Rather than try to reprogram everything or do all the adding and dividing by hand to get weighted GPAs, someone realized that they could get essentially the same result by just adding on that extra 0.2 per honors course. As you can see from the example above.</p>