How to calculate a gpa?

Parents Forum
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<p>Can anyone tell me how to calculate a gpa?</p>

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<p>There have been numerous posts on this topic.</p>

<p>There are as many ways to calculate GPA as there are schools.</p>

<p>Generally, for an UNweighted GPA:
A = 4
B = 3
C = 2
D = 1
Average all your kids' grades to get their GPA.</p>

<p>For a WEIGHTED GPA, where they give extra weight to Honors or AP classes, there are a few varieties. Our Guidance dept says to add .5 to an honors class and 1.0 for an AP class. Other CC posters add 1.0 to all Honors/AP classes.</p>

<p>Then there's the issue of which class grades to count. Generally, colleges look at core academics (math, english, social studies, science, languages) and skip Phys Ed. Again, it's a gray area.</p>

<p>Be aware that most colleges will look at your child's transcript and recalculate the GPA using their own method. So don't worry about what method your high school uses.</p>

<p>Our high school uses a wierd method where an A in a college-prep class is 12.0, an A in Honors is 15.0, A in AP is 16.5. But this really only counts for calculating class rank.</p>

<p>Confused yet?</p>

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<p>"So don't worry about what method your high school uses."</p>

<p>Well, you can worry about it to the extent it affects your rank, but realize that colleges may then go ahead and look at it differently. </p>

<p>Our school is also pretty weird. We have a 0-100 scale. The slow courses are weighted 1.0, regular Regents (college prep) courses are 1.05 and both honors and AP are 1.1. I wish APs were weighted more than honors, since I believe my son is the only one in his class who took one as a freshman, but they aren't.</p>

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<p>My son's school includes midterm and final grades in calculating GPA for each year (so GPA for the year equals midterm GPA plus final GPA divided by two). This would make sense to me if classes only ran for a semester, but pretty much all classes at this school are a year long. Thus, the total GPA ends up double counting the midterm grades. Do most people calculate their GPA this way?</p>

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<p>I think our school actually counts every marking period - but I don't know if they include finals, which are 10% of the end-of-course grade. It all comes out pretty much the same in the end anyway, as each marking period's grades are averaged into the year-end grade. I figured my son's GPA out based on his year-end grades and my results were .02 different from what the Guidance Counselor had. Close enough for me.</p>