Calculating Weighted GPA

Many students and parents are confused about calculating GPA's. PowerSchool automatically does this for each student. If you wish to do this yourself, here is how to calculate GPA using a Weighted calculation method.

Start with the grades. In this example, each letter grade has a value with 4.000 being the highest for an A and down to 0.00 for an F and honors courses get a 1.000 point boost. The table looks like this:

Your school may have a different set of values for the GPA points. Contact your site administrator to determine if a different set of GPA point values is used for your school.

To calculate the GPA you multiply the number of credits for each class times the number of grade points the letter grade earns. Add together this value for all classes and divide by the total number of credits. Remember, most classes are worth 0.5 credit. Band is the exception at 0.3 because it meets three times per week rather than the usual five times per week. In the elementary and junior high setting, core courses (math, English, science, social studies and Religion) ar worth 0.5 credit. Non-core (all the rest) classes are worth 0.25 credit.

So let’s consider the report card of a student. She’s taking Honors Spanish 3 and gets the one point grade point boost for it.