How does the 4.0 GPA scale work?

sherpa
Sat, 07 Jan 2017 14:19:23 +0000

I’ll give an example to demonstrate why you can’t do a direct conversion.

Students X and Y each take ten classes.

Student X gets 100’s in eight of them and 85’s in two, which is eight A’s and two B’s, or 3.8 on a 4.0 scale.

Student Y gets 97’s in all ten classes, which is all A’s, or a 4.0.

Both students have a 97 average but one has a 4.0 and the other has a 3.8.

To put it differently, to get a 4.0 one must get A’s in every class, while in a percentage system overly high scores in some classes can mask low scores in others.