Different Ways To Calculate Your High School GPA
It’s the end of your high school career and some of you may be wondering how to calculate your overall GPA. It’s important to be able to do this so that you can properly map out how you should approach your submissions when it comes to applying for your colleges of choice. You will be able to recognize your strong points and weaker points, thus allowing for you to be able to even out your overall resume to be the best it can be.
What is the difference between a weighted and unweighted GPA? Some schools calculate an unweighted GPA which uses a scale that ranges from 0.0 to 4.0. In this case, the difficulty of the class is not considered. Other schools use a weighted GPA which DOES take class difficulty into consideration – This particular scale is from 0.0 to 5.0. Here is a helpful example: For unweighted GPA scoring, Student 1 gets an A in Math class, Student 2 gets an A in AP Math – Both A’s are treated equally even though students took different difficulty levels of the same class. For weighted GPA scoring, Student 1 would get a 4.0 for his A and Student 2 would get a 5.0 for taking a more difficult class.
Below is a copy of an unweighted scale for calculating your GPA from prepscholar.com:
| Letter Grade | Percentile | GPA |
| A+ | 97-100 | 4.0 |
| A | 93-96 | 4.0 |
| A- | 90-92 | 3.7 |
| B+ | 87-89 | 3.3 |
| B | 83-86 | 3.0 |
| B- | 80-82 | 2.7 |
| C+ | 77-79 | 2.3 |
| C | 73-76 | 2.0 |
| C- | 70-72 | 1.7 |
| D+ | 67-69 | 1.3 |
| D | 65-66 | 1.0 |
| F | Below 65 | 0.0 |
Here is how you will calculate your score after looking at the chart:
- Add all converted decimal grades together = sum.
- Count the number of classes you’ve taken.
- Divide sum by number of classes = unweighted GPA
To calculate every year of high school’s GPA: Divide the sum by the number of classes you took each year.
How do you calculate a cumulative GPA? Add the sums up for all of the years in high school, and then divide by ALL of the classes he took throughout those years.
Most importantly, calculating the GPA that you will send out to colleges: You would do the same as how you would calculate a cumulative GPA for all of high school years, but leave off senior year as your college application will go out beginning of senior year.
37 + 36 + 26.1 = 99.1 (sum of grades from 9-11)
9 + 10 + 8 = 27 (amount of classes taken from 9-11)
99.1 / 27 = 3.6(college application GPA)
As you are soon to take your finals this academic year, Socrato encourages you to look over this information and calculate your weighted/unweighted GPA to help best prepare you for how well you should try your best to do on your final exams to achieve optimal scores. This may seem daunting now, but think about how much smoother your journey will be into college and while submitting your applications if you continue to do your best at everything today.
Reminded me this article http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/motivation/2007/12/same_grades_different_gpa.html. There are 4 main ways to calculate your GPA(http://www.wikihow.com/Calculate-GPA) but it still any of it is not perfect and can not objectively assess student knowledge. And the most important thing that GPA can’t be a motivator for students. We always have to remind about real motivation http://phdify.com/blog/how-to-overcome-students-laziness-and-lack-of-motivation.