What is a GPA in Actuality?

Applying to College
1

It has recently come to my attention that a traditional, “percentage” grade point average does not always translate correctly once converted to a 4.0 scale. Let us say that a student has a 95 unweighted average, and she is planning to apply to prestigious universities. She comes across several websites, the first being the Princeton Review website, which claims that her 95 is a 4.0… in addition to other tutorials which convert this score to a 3.75, private high school translation methods that offer still other calculations, and yet another site which states that a 4.0 only occurs when one has straight A’s. However, what is the true conversion, and why might the internet be so vague on the topic of converting higher tier grades to a 4-point scale?

2

Update:
I have just stumbled upon more contradictions. Yahoo claims that a 3.5 GPA is an even 87.5, while gpacalculator.net maintains that it is equivalent to a 90.

3

What does your school say and A is? Most schools have a cutoff at 90% or 93%. And you don’t just take the average. Change each %age to a grade, then to a 4.0.scale Then multiply the points times the weight each class gets (assuming the weight varies). Divide total points by total weights.

4

Thanks for the help, but I do not mean anything about weight - I simply want to know how to convert an unweighted average (the mathematical mean of the one’s grades, regardless of AP or honors designation) - into a 4.0 scale. An example would be a 95 - is that a 4.0? or 9.75?

I mean this as one applies to college and examines all the average accepted GPAs. For instance, Columbia University’s students had an average GPA of 3.81. What is that in percentage form? 96.2? Or around 93?

5

The one on the College Board website is accurate. Anything 93% + would be a 4.0

6

OP, I was not referring to any difficulty weighting. I was referring to half credit vs. full credit classes. For instance art may be a half semester course and only get 1/2 a credit. I would use 93-100 = A, 86-93=B.

7

What I am sensing is that you are worrying about how your 0-100 grade converts to 4.0 scale.

First of all, they will see in your transcript the 95. The college will know that is excellent.

My daughter had an even worse case…first two years were 0-100 scale, and the second two were IB (0-7)

We never knew what her 4.0 scale GPA was. Didn’t matter…the colleges figured it out. She got merit scholarships.