QandAs: Career

What Is A GPA?

Answer:
The term GPA stands for Grade Point Average, and it is used in high school and college in order to rank the student’s overall performance.

This will determine their overall level of comprehension of the material they are studying as they work toward their degree.

Typically, grades have been issued as a letter (A, B, C, D, and F). Each of these letters will have a corresponding numerical value. The GPA is the average of these values. For example, if a student takes three classes and receive an A (4.0) and two Bs (3.0), their GPA would be 3.33. Potential employers or subsequent universities may use this GPA value in order to compare candidates and assess their potential performance. A cumulative GPA will be the GPA for all the terms they have been at the school, whereas a GPA may refer to only the last or current term.

As a variation, especially in universities, the classes will have a certain number of credit hours, which is used in the GPA in order to get a more accurate ranking for their work. For example, a three credit hour biology class will hold a lot more weight than a single credit hour art class. Let’s assume the following classes and grades:

Art: 1 Credit hour; C (2.0)
Biology: 3 Credit hours; B (3.0)
History: 2 Credit hours; A (4.0)

In this example, the GPA for the student would be 3.17 ((1 * 2) + (3 * 3) + (2 * 4))/6. As you can see, this is much more representative of the students work than simply an average of the grades, which would be 3.0.