If you are a current student, you can find your GPA by looking at “Transcript” under “Academic Profile” in your WebAdvisor account. If you have also declared your major and minor, you can find your GPA in your major(s) and minor(s) by running a Program Evaluation (Degree Audit) in WebAdvisor. However, students in student-designed or other special majors or minors may need to do a manual calculation of the major/minor GPA if it does not appear in the Degree Audit.
Alumni who no longer have access to WebAdvisor can order a transcript to find out your overall GPA. The transcript also lists the credits and grades you will need to calculate specific GPA’s (major field, junior-senior year, etc.)
If you need to calculate a GPA manually, you first need to identify which courses to include in the calculation. Courses taken on the Credit/No Credit basis, courses in which you received a grade of “W” or “Incomplete,” and transfer courses with grades of “TR” should not be included. (Once an Incomplete has been completed, however, the final grade does count in the GPA.) If you repeat a course, include only the most recent attempt at the course unless one of the following circumstances applies:
- You received a grade of “W” for the most recent attempt. In this case, the most recent non-W grade for the course should be used.
- The course is a music ensemble, internship or other similar course for which you can earn credit each time you take it. For these courses, include all graded instances of the course in calculating your GPA.
Once you have identified the set of courses to include in the calculation, you will need the following for each course:
1. The number of credits. Most courses are worth four credits but some are worth one, two, or three – check your transcript to see the credit value for each course.
2. The quality point value corresponding to the letter grade you received for the course. Allegheny assigns quality points as follows:
- A (excellent); 4.00 quality points
- A – ; 3.70 quality points
- B + ; 3.30 quality points
- B (good); 3.00 quality points
- B – ; 2.70 quality points
- C + ; 2.30 quality points
- C (fair) ; 2.00 quality points
- C – ; 1.70 quality points
- D + ; 1.30 quality points
- D (passing); 1.00 quality points
- F (failure); 0.00 quality points
Now for the math:
- For each course, multiply the number of credits by the grade quality points to to get the total quality points for that course.
- Add the total quality points for all the courses together.
- Add the total credits for all the courses together.
- Divide the quality point total by the credit total. The result is the GPA.
Example: Henry Bannister has the following courses on his record:
- Chem 110, four credits, B –
- Math 160, four credits, B
- FS101, four credits, A –
- ECON 101, four credits, CR
- Music 118, one credit, A
- Music 120, one credit, A
First, we remove ECON 101 because it was taken on the Credit/No Credit basis. Then, we calculate quality points for each of the remaining courses:
- Chem 110: 4 x 2.7 = 10.8
- Math 160: 4 x 3.0 = 12.0
- FS101: 4 x 3.7 = 14.8
- Music 118: 1 x 4 = 4.0
- Music 120: 1 x 4 = 4.0
Total quality points = 10.8+12.0+14.8+4.0+4.0 = 45.6
Total graded credits = 4 + 4 + 4+ 1 + 1 = 14
GPA = 45.6/14 = 3.26