GPA calculation

Parents Forum
1

Does your HS calculate GPA based on the semester grade instead of the overall final grade?

I always thought the final grades determine the GPA, say an A is 4, a B is a 3. etc…

I calculated one of my student’s GPA and found out their school uses the semester grades, say she got A- in several semesters, but got a very high A in one semester that pulled up her overall grade to an A, I assume she would got a 4 for the course, it turned out that she got a 3.6 for that course because of the A- in the several semesters…
Has anyone heard of this type of calculation?

2

My high school had block scheduling, so we had four classes every fall semester and then switched to four new classes in the spring. Our final grades were the only ones that went into the GPA calculation.

For this situation, I wouldn’t worry about an A minus in the first place, especially since it was raised to an A at the end.

3

Some schools annualized grades meaning the final grade for the year is the only grade that shows up on the transcript and credit is granted at the end of the school year.

Ex: 2015 - 2016

English A
Math. A-
History B+

GPA 3.66

Other schools grant credit, give grades and calculate grades on a semester system. You will most likely see term 1 and term 2 as part of the same school year.

Ex 2015 - 2016

Term 1
English A
Math A-
History B+
GPA 3.66

Term 2
English A-
Math A-
History. B+

GPA 3.56

Year GPA 3.6166

Every school is different. It does not matter what another school does. It only matter how your/your child’s school awards credits and transcripts grades

Get a copy of your child’s transcript and see if grades are given semester over semester or annualized year over year.

4

Yes; it’s very common. Some HS’s calculate based on year-end grades, others based on semester grades. It totally depends upon the school.

5

Thank you. I did not know it is common…The kid showed me her transcript which showed only year end grade along with the GPA on the transcript, I thought it was low based on what I saw on the transcript, hence I did some calculations and was surprised.
Therefore theoretically a student could have all As on the transcript but a 3.7 GPA…

6

There is a reason colleges recalculate their own version of the gpa…

7

@wis75 but unfortunately not all colleges do, say U of Alabama…

8

Even if they don’t recalculate, colleges still usually look at the GPA in the context of the student’s high school and how challenging their classes were. It would be a less numbers-focused process. However, the University of Alabama has scholarships that depend on (for example) having a “3.5 cumulative GPA,” so I’m not sure how they determine who meets that criterion.

9

@halcyonheather for U of Alabama, they will base on the GPA reported on the transcript…I checked…and I suspect many state colleges will look at the GPA reported on the transcript…

10

Our school based it on quarter grades and if the course had a NYS Regent’s Exam associated with it, that counted as a quarter too. (Or at least that’s what they said.) When I tried calculating how they came up with my younger son’s GPA I could never get exactly the same number.

11

I’m just confused on what they do if the GPA is on, say, a 10-point scale or a 100-point scale.

12

@mathmom does your school include the quarter grades in the transcript?

@halcyonheather for U of Alabama, you can email them or post on the U of Alabama forum…

13

@annamom,

the question is what does your school use? That is all that really matters. Does your school do semester grades or do they annualized grades? Every on will be evaluated based on the information provided by their school.

14

I don’t know how Alabama does that, HH.

But outside that, adcoms can look at the transcript for actual grades. Overall gpa usually includes electives and classes like gym or drivers ed.

And they know how to convert a 100 pt scale. (Most schools use that, anyway, and just convert to a letter grade.)

OP, what matters is how your hs does it.

15

We just have our final letter grade on the transcript.

Our grades come from a numerical grade

For yearly classes
qt 1 = 20%
qt 2 = 20%
midterm = 10%
qt 3 = 20%
qt 4 = 20%
final = 10%

if a decimal is involved then 0.4 and under rounds down, 0.5 and up rounds up no grade is higher than a 100
letter grade determines gpa and comes from:
A plus 98 to 100
A 93 to 97
A minus 90 to 92
B plus 87 to 89
B 83 to 86
B minus 80 to 82
C plus 77 to 79
C 73 to 76
etc

16

oh we have a few classes that don’t count towards gpa but there numerical scores for each quarter, midterm and final do show up on the quarterly report cards plus a letter grade goes on the transcript. These include gym and health (mandatory) and perhaps a few others like Freshman choir. Our local schools don’t offer driver’s ed as part of the curriculum and even if they provide space for the classroom portion it is not affiliated with the school

17

@mathmom our NY high school does the same. The 4 quarters are averaged and then weighted at 75% and the other 25% is the Regents or final.