What Is a GPA?

Most likely, in your high school classes, your final grades are awarded either as letters (A-, B+, etc.) or percents (92%, 85%, etc. out of 100%). A GPA, or grade point average, converts those letters or percents into numbers and then averages these numbers together. Because it's made up of all your grades, your GPA is one of the most important factors for college admission. It's a good indicator of your intelligence, work ethic, perseverance, and willingness to push yourself. GPAs are useful for colleges to easily compare you with other students who graduated from your school and with all the other applicants. But why? Imagine you're an admissions officer who has to look at thousands of college applications. Would you rather go through each transcript individually, add up all the As and all the Bs, and then compare that to the next person, and so on? Or, would you rather have an easy summary number that could be used for a quick comparison across the board? Your GPA is that quick summary number.   body_smoreTurn the hard to eat ingredients of your transcript into the gooey s'more deliciousness of a GPA. Probably not with an open flame, though.  

The Difference Between Weighted and Unweighted GPA

There are two main types of GPAs: weighted and unweighted. An unweighted GPA is when a school uses a scale that goes from 0.0 to 4.0 and does not take into account the difficulty level of classes. By contrast, a weighted GPA is when a school uses a scale that goes from 0.0 all the way up to 5.0 (or sometimes 6.0) and does take into account class difficulty. In this model, the school gives higher numerical values to grades earned in honors, AP, and/or IB classes. Here's an example to help clarify the differences here. Say Jeremy gets an A in a standard-level US History class, whereas Lakshmi gets an A in AP US History. In the unweighted GPA model, both As are treated the same way, with each translating to a 4.0. But in the weighted GPA model, Jeremy's A would convert to a 4.0 and Lakshmi's A would convert to a 5.0 to show that her class took a lot more effort to ace. See the difference? Before we continue, it's important to understand that this article focuses mainly on explaining and calculating unweighted GPAs. (For more information on weighted GPAs, check out our other guide.)   body_kettlebellsSure, you can pick them up, but doesn't it help to know how much each weighs?