What exactly is a gpa?

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1. Grade point average. It’s a number that’s generally on a 0 to 4 scale that is an average of all your grades. You usually get a GPA for the semester, the year, and for all of high school. An A is a 4, a B is a 2, C is a 3, and so on.

   It gets more complicated than that – for example, honors classes and AP classes can add extra points to your GPA, so technically you can get higher than a 4.0 (the valedictorian of my high school class had a 4.2), but for standard classes, 4 is the highest you can get.

2. GPA stands for Grade Point Average. It’s the most succinct way to rank students, and it helps colleges pinpoint which students they “want”. A (90-100), B (80-89), C (70-79), D (60-69), F (0-59). For example, if you received all A’s throughout school, you’d have a 4.0 (the perfect score). If you received a mixture of A’s and B’s, you might have a 3.5 GPA.

   You can also take Advanced Placement (AP) or International Baccalaureate (IB) courses to go beyond a 4.0. These courses often count for college credit and are extremely competitive and much more difficult than your average high school courses.

3. It stands for Grade Point Average, and it is a way of describing how good of a student is across all of their classes.

   The basic standard is that an A is worth a 4.0, a B is worth a 3.0, as C is worth a 2.0, and a D is worth a 1.0. Some schools will give additional points like making a B+ worth 3.25 or making an honors class worth an extra 0.5, but that isn’t universal. Each class is then weighted based on how many credit hours they are worth. So, some classes might just be 1 credit but others might be 6. Most classes are typically 3 or 4. Your points for your grade will then be averaged based on how much each class is weighted to give you your GPA.

   So, for example, if I had two 4 credit classes and I got a B in one and an A in the other, my GPA would be a 3.5. But, if the class with an A was only worth 3 credits, that would become a 3.43 (with some rounding). Not that big of a change, but it is noticeable. A more extreme example would be a class worth 1 credit that is an A and a class worth 7 credits that is a B. This comes to 3.125. Still two classes that are an A and a B, but they reflect differently in the GPA.

   Once you start talking about several semesters worth of classes and students with over a hundred credits, the GPA becomes extremely useful as a way to distill the student’s academic performance to a single number. The school can look at both a single semester GPA and the overall GPA to gauge how the student is doing. This can affect whether or not the school feels the need to put them on academic probation (the details of which will depend on the school). It will also affect whether or not the student qualifies for certain advanced programs or awards. It is something considered when graduate schools are looking at students. It isn’t the only factor, but it is a factor and many grad programs will have minimum GPA requirements.

   I’ll also note that many high schools also use a GPA system. It is usually a bit simpler because they don’t weight the classes as different credit hours, but it is still used as a way to quickly summarize academic performance. When applying to colleges, it will be one of the key factors considered. Again, not the only factor, but one of the major ones.