One of the most important numbers that weighs on a high school, college and graduate student's mind is the 'Grade Point Average (GPA)'. You know what I am talking about, if you are a high school or college student. Good grades translate into a good GPA which in turn can really take you to places and increase your chances of landing up with a good college scholarship and eventually a good job. Keeping your GPA up is one of the most important responsibilities of every student, creating the right stepping stone for a future career. What is a GPA? For those of you, who are new to the concept of calculating GPA, let me explain what is meant by a GPA. All schools have universally accepted a grade system to evaluate student performance in exams. As a cumulative aggregate of marks earned in the various types of tests conducted as part of a course, students are assigned grades by their teachers accordingly. These grades are generally alphabets (A,B,C,D,E,F). Every grade is assigned a grade point value with 'A' getting the highest and 'F' being assigned a zero value. As you must have already guessed, GPA (Grade Point Average) is calculated by taking a mean value of all the grade points scored in every course. There are two main methods for calculation of GPA. The first method involves the calculating it from a straightforward averaging procedure. The other method is calculating a weighted GPA. Every subject does not have the same level of difficulty. A simple GPA may not reflect the exact performance of a student in various subjects with varying order of difficulty. Hence the concept of weighted GPA was introduced. The 'weight factor' is introduced in the form of credit hours or credits allotted for the course or subject. While calculating, check which kind of GPA computation method is used in your educational institution.. Methods For Calculating High School GPA As explained above, there are primarily two methods of calculating GPA. One is simple average and second one is the weighted average. Let me first explain the method of calculating GPA of simple average type first. Simple Average Firstly, get your grades earned for all courses and refer to the grade point values assigned for each grade. Usually they are assigned as A-5, B-4, C-3, D-1, F-0 or A-4, B-3, C-2, D-1, F-0. Note down the grade points scored by you according to your grades. Next, add up all the grade point values and divide the total, by number of courses and voila! You have the GPA. If you are wondering about the method for calculating GPA from percentage, then you must first convert your percentage for each subjects into grades and subsequently into grade points. After that the method is same as above. Usually, every high school will provide you with a chart, for conversion of percentages into appropriate value of grade points or grades. Check out your high school website's exams section. Weighted Average Some high schools have a GPA calculated as a weighted average. In this case, the first part of the procedure is same as above. You first find your grade points for every course and then also find out the credit hours or credits assigned for each course. Then you multiply your grade points for every course, by the corresponding credit hours or credits. Add all the products that you get from each multiplication to get a sum. Divide that sum by the total number of credit hours or credits to get your weighed average GPA. If you are calculating GPA in college, it will mostly be of the weighted average type. Calculating your GPA can also be done by using online GPA calculators, provided by some websites. Mostly, only graduate schools use the weighted average method. It is not so common in high schools. As you have already seen, it is quite a simple procedure and all it takes is some basic arithmetic skills. With a calculator at hand, using the above formula for calculating GPA, you can easily know what your current GPA is and evaluate your scores accordingly. The system for calculating a grade point average varies largely. The procedure underlined above is the most generally used one. Check out with your school teachers or college professors for the kind of GPA calculation method used in your educational institution and evaluate accordingly.