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We’ve been looking at report cards, and we’ve seen that the GPA (grade point average) is an important part of the information conveyed by the report card.  GPAs become increasingly important as a student gets older.  GPAs are used (1) to determine who is eligible for the Honor Roll, (2) to determine a student’s class rank, and (3) in college admissions.

(1)  Honor Roll:  The school acknowledges its better students by listing them on the Honor Roll for the quarter.  The exact criteria for inclusion on the honor vary from school to school, but a typical criterion might be a minimum GPA of 3.0 for Honors and a minimum GPA of 3.5 for High Honors.  In college, this acknowledgement is usually called a dean’s list.  Again, the concept is similar:  students with a GPA above a certain value are included in the list.

(2)  Class rank:   The class rank is the position of the student relative to those in his class as determined by the student’s GPA.  Thus, if a student has a class rank of 8, that means that his GPA is the 8th highest one for his class.  Of course, it is more impressive if a student ranks 8th in a class of 200 students rather than a class of only 20, so many times the class rank will also indicate how many students are in the class:  a class rank of 12/175 means that the student has the 12th highest GPA out of a class of 175 students.

(3)  College admissions:  There is much to be said about college admissions, and we will cover this in greater detail in a future Education Focus.  Here we will just note that a student’s GPA is one of the more important criteria that colleges will consider when they review a student’s college admission application.  The higher the GPA, the better, as it generally indicates that a student is a good student and will have a greater chance of success in college.

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Let’s continue our look at report cards, which we started last week.  Although students are given a letter grade based on the percentage earned from their assignments, tests, and quizzes, this letter grade is converted to a number for the purpose of calculating the GPA (grade point average).  With this conversion, an “A” has the value 4.0, while an “F” has a value of 0.0.  The full breakdown of values is as follows:

A+ (97%) – 4.0
A (93%) – 4.0
A– (90%) – 3.7 (3.67)
B+ (87%) – 3.3
B (83%) – 3.0
B– (80%) – 2.7 (2.67)
C+ (77%) – 2.3
C (73%) – 2.0
C– (70%) – 1.7 (1.67)
D+ (67%) – 1.33
D (63%) – 1.0
D– (60%) – 0.7 (0.67)
F – 0.0

With these values, then, it is easy to calculate a student’s GPA:  a student who had three As, two Bs, and one C would have a GPA of 3.3:

three As:    4.0 X 3
two Bs:    3.0 X 2
one C:        2.0 X 1
20 points for 6 classes = 20/6 ==> 3.3

One of the drawbacks of calculating the GPA in this way is that an “A” in a relatively easy class (such as typing) is no different than an “A” in a more difficult class (such as calculus or physics).  This means that some students would probably take classes that are easy, instead of classes that are more challenging, because they are trying to keep their GPA as high as possible.  A solution to this is the concept of “weighted grades.”  Weighted grades are used primarily at the high school level, but not all high schools use weighted grades.

Weighted grades take into account the level of difficulty of the particular subject.  Harder subjects in general, or honors classes in particular, are worth more in terms of their GPA value than easy subjects / non-honors classes.  So in a weighted-grade system, an “A” in calculus would have a GPA value of 5.0 (for example) instead of the normal 4.0.  With weighted grades, then, it is possible to have a GPA that is higher than 4.0 (which is the maximum GPA under a non-weighted-grade system). Weighted grades help to reward the risk to a student’s GPA in taking more challenging classes.

Report cards used to be completed by hand, and the teacher would pass them out at the end of the term.  The student would then be expected to take them home for the parents to look at (who had to sign them, indicating that they had seen the report card), and then bring them back to school.  Of course, there were many students who were afraid to bring home their report cards (or pretended to “lose” or “forget” their report cards) because they were ashamed of their grades!

Nowadays, report cards are addressed to the parents and mailed to the student’s home.  Not as many excuses for “lost” or “forgotten” report cards this way!  Many schools also let parents log in and check their student’s grades at any time during the school term, as well as check for missing assignments, etc.  If a parent has concerns about his student’s academic performance, he can also request a parent-teacher conference.

Next week we’ll wrap up this little series on report cards with a look at why GPAs are important to students.

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