What is the difference between a Weighted GPA and an Unweighted GPA? (2024)

Possible Scenario(s):

1. What's the advantage of having a weighted and unweighted GPA scale?

2. How can I find out more information about weighted and unweighted GPAs?

Solution:

Many schools offer accelerated, Honors, Advanced Placement (AP), or International Baccalaureate (IB) classes. To reflect the increased difficulty of these classes, schools will often award students with a slight GPA boost. The GPA generated as a result of this GPA boost is commonly referred to as a Weighted GPA.

Let's look at a simple example:

In the Standard grade scale built in to Gradelink, an A+ has a GPA value of 4.00. In the Honors grade scale (which is another built-in grade scale intended for use with accelerated/advanced classes), an A+ has a GPA value of 5.00.

Depending on the unique needs of your school, a Weighted GPA can be implemented in two ways:

• Using a GPA Boost
• Using a separate Grade Scale

Method 1: GPA Boost

A GPA Boost is an additional point value that is applied uniformly to every grade on a grade scale. This method should be used if schools would like to boost every grade on a grade scale by the same amount.

In the example above, a 1.00-point GPA Boost was applied to every grade on the Standard grade scale.

If you would like to learn more about implementing a GPA Boost, please click here.

Method 2: Separate Grade Scale

While a GPA Boost is applied to every grade on a grade scale, some schools may wish to only weight certain grades differently. For example, maybe a school only wants to apply a GPA boost for students who achieve a C- or higher. If that is the case, the best method to use is to simply create another grade scale and manually adjust the GPA values for certain grades.

In the example above, the GPA value was adjusted for grades ranging from an A+ to a C-, but the rest of the grade scale was left alone.

If you would like to learn more about setting up grade scales, please click here.