Hi,
My overall GPA, GPA in final 2 years, final year and final semester are 3.41, 3.34, 3.4 and 4.0 respectively. I want to apply to graduate school.
I thought maybe listing the 4.0 would help me catch the professor’s attention and divert from the 3.41, but at the some time a single semester doesn’t say much.
Should I include my final semester GPA on my CV when contacting professors for graduate student positions?
Ask your advisor about this. In my field it wasn’t something anyone would do. But maybe it is in yours.
unusual. What is typical is overall and major GPA (as that is what will pique a grad prof’s interest)
A single semester’s performance is likely not going to help you much. If it was part of an overall upward trend (like let’s say your numbers are overall 3.41, but 3.67 in your final two years and 4.0 in your final year) then that would look good and help make your case. But one semester’s worth of high performance is both unnecessary to highlight and can clearly be gleaned from a glance at your transcript.
When you contact professors to talk about graduate student positions, you don’t need to talk about your GPA at all OR list it on your CV. (That’s generally true: you don’t need to put your GPA in any form on your CV. Only give it when asked.) Instead, you should be talking about your research interests and experience and how they fit in with that professor’s research interests and agenda.