Calculating Your GPA

This page will cover:

• How do you calculate your GPA? 
• What will your GPA be if you take a course P/F? 
• What about repeats?

HOW TO CALCULATE YOUR GPA

GPAs are calculated by this formula: Quality Points ÷ GPA Hours = GPA

To understand what these terms mean, take a look at your unofficial transcript (accessed through Knightweb).  Look at the end of your most recent graded term.  It might look like this:

Quality points are determined by multiplying your grade in a course by the number of credits.  So an “A” in a 4-credit course is worth 16 quality points because 4 is the numerical equivalent of an A (see chart below).

GPA Hours are credit hours you take in a “normal-graded” course.  Transfer, S/U, and P/F courses do not create GPA Hours, although they reflect Earned Hours.

If this were your transcript, you would have attempted 96 credits and passed 90 credits.  You’d have 93 GPA hours, which means you didn’t pass a 3-credit course (but the E is calculated in your GPA).

CALCULATING YOUR GPA

This excel spreadsheet is incredibly handy for testing out the impact of different grades for courses and clearly shows how credits and quality points work together to generate a GPA. 

P/F or S/U Courses

Courses taken with a pass/fail grading mode or satisfactory/unsatisfactory, if they are not repeats, have no effect on GPA Hours and no effect on Quality Points.  Leave the courses OUT of your GPA calculations in the spreadsheet.

REPEAT GRADES

Scenario 1: repeating a course, second attempt (selecting "Normal Grading")

• If you are replacing an E with a new grade, keep the same GPA Hours and add the new QPs to your Quality Points total, then calculate GPA.
• If you are replacing a “D” grade (you earned credits), you will keep the same the GPA hours, just change the Quality Points from 1.00 (D) to you new or anticipated grade. 

Scenario 2: repeating a course, second attempt (selecting "P/F Grading")

• If your first grade was an E, the credits are already counted, but the quality points are 0.  So replacing an E with a P removes the credits from your GPA calculation.
• If your first grade was a D, the credits and the quality points need to be removed from your GPA calculation.

Example of Scenario 2

You took MATH 222 and earned an “E.”  Your repeated MATH 222 and earned a “P.”  Using the sample transcript above, you reduce the GPA hours by 4 (it’s a four-credit course), getting “89”  and subtract nothing from Quality Points, leaving “297.”  297 ÷ 89 = 3.33 GPA. 

If you replace a “D” with a “P” you reduce both GPA Hours and Quality Points:

93 - 4 = 89           297 - 4 = 293                   293 ÷ 89 = 3.29 GPA.

PLEASE NOTE: If you replace a “D” grade with a "P" you do not earn additional credits.  When that “D” is excluded, so are the credits you earned. 

Numerical equivalencies to calculate Quality Points: