How to Calculate GPA

I hope everyone had a great Christmas!!  I spent last week hanging out with my family and enjoying some time off.  We went for a beautiful hike on the beach, ate more food than I should have eaten, and just sat and talked about our lives.

With school coming back in session, some of you are starting to wonder about your grades.  Some schools just finished their fall semester, and some have midterms or finals coming up.  Today I’m going to help you find your GPA.

How to calculate your GPA

The first way to find out your GPA is to go to your guidance councilor and ask them.  They usually have the tools to check prospective GPA’s too.  That means they can see “what if’s”.  For example, “what if I get a C in math, will I still have above a 3.0 and be eligible for ASB?” 

If you’re going to calculate your GPA, you first need to know how many points each grade is rewarded.  Here are two different examples:

College Example A = 4.00 grade points A- = 3.70 grade points  B+ = 3.33 grade points B = 3.00 grade points B- = 2.70 grade points C+ = 2.30 grade points C = 2.00 grade points C- = 1.70 grade points D+ = 1.30 grade points D = 1.00 grade points D- = 0.70 grade points WF/F=0 grade points

High School Example A+, A, A- = 4.00 grade points B+, B, B- = 3.00 grade points C+, C, C- = 2.00 grade points D+, D, D- = 1.00 grade points WF/F=0 grade points AP Courses (sometimes Honors) A+, A, A- = 5.00 grade points B+, B, B- = 4.00 grade points C+, C, C- = 3.00 grade points D+, D, D- = 2.00 grade points WF/F=0 grade points

If you don’t know what your school uses, you can ask your guidance councilor or look at your most recent report card.  Once you know which grading scale is used, write out all of your previous grades, the grade point equivalent, and how many credits each is worth. Some schools have normal classes as 1 credit and small electives as 0.5 credits, some have normal classes as 5 credits and small electives as 2.5 credits, and some courses (usually college) determine on the number of hours of class each week (any where from 1 to 5).

Your list might look something like this if you’re in high school:

To find the GPA, you divide the total grade points earned by the total credits attempted.  Notice how the dance class “A” is worth half as much as the English class “A”.  

Guess you won’t make that honor roll…

Here is a college example:

To find the GPA, you divide the total grade points earned by the total credits attempted.  Notice how the surfing class “A” is worth a third as much as the English class “A”.  

Interesting that the same grades in college get you a lower GPA.  This is because of how the credits are weighted. 

If you want to estimate what your GPA would be “if…” then put in those “if’s” and see what happens!

Here is a FREE worksheet and excel file on Teachers Pay Teachers that I’ve created for calculating GPA.