<p>Does anyone know how colleges actually calculate GPA?</p>
<p>There is a lot of literature but I haven't found anything conclusive.</p>
<p>My son's school does not provide letter grades - only numeric grades. Allow me to provide an example:</p>
<p>Assume he has 5 classes in a semester with the following grades:</p>
<p>96
93
89
87
86</p>
<p>If I take an average of that, it is 90.2 and translate that to the most commonly accepted GPA scale, it would be a 4.0. However, if take the following:</p>
<p>96 --> 4.0
93 --> 4.0
89 --> 3.0
87 --> 3.0
86 --> 3.0</p>
<p>And average the GPA, it is 3.4. A BIG difference.</p>
<p>Additionally, in a couple of his classes, he is automatically awarded an additional 7 points to his final average. So the above would actually be:</p>
<p>Final Course Average<br>
89
92
82
80
79</p>
<p>Reported on Transcript
96
93
89
87
86</p>
<p>How do colleges view all of the above and what methodology will they use to calculate the GPA? Do they ever make their methods public? Has anyone recently gone through it?</p>
<p>Thanks in advance.</p>
<p>Regards,</p>