How to calculate GPA

Parents Forum
1

<p>Just curious, there must be a standard formula that schools adopt with some interpretation as to how to treat honors, AP, etc. For example, why isn’t an 85 a 3.5?</p>

2

<p>There is no consensus on this. Common sense would dictate to transform every grade to the letter ABCDF, assign weights of 4.00, 3.00, 2.00, 1.00 and zero, and finnaly add them up and divide by the number of classes.</p>

<p>However, some schools have ridiculous systems that defeat the entire system: some IB programs consider every class to be advanced, others eliminate the standard ones (PE, Choir, etc), some schools add extradordinary weights to AP class (as much as 40%.) </p>

<p>Sadly enough, a GPA only makes sense in the precise school where it is earned. A 3.5 GPA at one school could be MUCH better than a 4.6 at a school with liberal or fluff policies. </p>

<p>The kids who suffer the most from comparisons are the kids with 0-100 scales with straight 8 points scales (A being 93-100, no plus or minus.) A straight conversion to a letter system is devastating. In this case, the only hope is to try the school to adopt the CRS scale and, at least, get a comparable conversion scale.</p>

3

<p>xiggi,</p>

<p>What about kids from foreign schools with totally different (and tougher) systems for grading and no tradition of providing GPA’s?</p>

4

<p>This kind of inconsistency in grading—and it really does exist—is why so many schools rely on standardized testing.</p>

<p>Many colleges recalculate the GPA directly. MIT, for example, has the student create a grading matrix that indicates whether the course is honors/AP-IB/college and put the course into a category (math/english/social studies/other (which includes art, music, and PE)/etc.). <a href=“http://web.mit.edu/admissions/pdf/MITcoursework.pdf[/url]”>http://web.mit.edu/admissions/pdf/MITcoursework.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

5

<p>

That would be us, and you’re right. Converting strictly to ABCDF would be devastating. The school does provide a “conversion chart” from their scale to a 4.0 scale, which helps. Just hope the colleges pay attention to it.</p>