how do you calculate GPA?

<p>so my school uses a sort of byzantine algorithm to determine class rank (kidding.. only kind of), and doesnt give us an actual GPA.
we have 6 levels of classes: Unleveled; [from lowest to highest] College Preparatory Level 3, College Preparatory Level 2, College Preparatory Level 1, Honors, Advanced Placement
i think College Preparatory Level 1 is the standard 'on level' but i'm not 100%.
most of my classes are Honors or AP, and i'm not sure how i'd scale in the difference in level
if A in College Preparatory Level 1 is a 4, does that mean an A in AP is a 6? i feel like my GPA would be way too high if its supposed to be out of 4 to begin with.</p>

<p>someone please enlighten me.</p>

<p>I suspect that there are many different ways of doing it, depending on the school. My D's school is on a 5.0 scale. If you take a remedial class, a basic class, a college prep class or an accelerated college prep class, A=5.0, A-=4.67, B+=4.33, etc. If you take an honors or AP class, you add 0.5 to the regular grade points. I don't know for sure, but I think you convert their grades to a 4.0 scale by simply subtracting 1 from each number. I've heard of different schools that give more of a pop for AP than for honors, and I'm sure that whereas D's school gives 0.5 extra for honors/AP, other schools give more or less. I've also heard from some admissions officers that they recalculate the grades from D's school anyway, which generally results in a higher GPA.</p>