Keeping your grade point average or GPA up is important in attaining academic success. A good GPA can help you avail of college scholarships. Thus, it is vital to know how to calculate your high school GPA if you have plans to go to college.

Schools like Stanford Business School requires that you must have a 3.6 GPA, while Harvard University will only consider your application if you have a 3.8 GPA.  Yale University requires high school applicants to have a GPA of 3.9 to be considered.

A very good GPA can even put you at an advantage in landing the job that you want. A survey made by the National Association of Colleges and Employers shows that 70 percent of hiring managers use GPA as a way of screening their applicants. For these reasons it is important that you know how to calculate your GPA to be able to maintain it and meet the acceptable standards.

Steps on how to calculate high school GPA:

1. Replace Letters with numbers

The first step is to replace your grade letters with numbers. Since A is the highest grade, replace it with 4. B becomes 3, C becomes 2 and of course D is 1.

Subject            Grade             Number replacement

Biology             A                            4

Physics            B                             3

Chemistry      C                             2

Spanish           D                             1

2. Write down your subject’s credit hours

Next, you will have to write down the credit hours you attended for each subject. This is important because subjects in college vary in credit hours.  For example, Biology has 4 credit hours, while Physics and Chemistry both have 3 credit hours while Spanish has only 1 credit hour.

Subject            Credit hours

Biology             4

Physics            3

Chemistry      3

Spanish           1

3. Add up your credit hour points

Now that you know how many credit hour points each subject is worth, simply add them up and multiply the sum with the maximum number score. In this case, the maximum number score is 4 for a grade of A.

In our example, the total credit hours is equal to 11, multiplied by 4 (as the highest score possible). Your total credit hour point is 44.

Subject                        Credit hours

Biology                        4

Physics                       3

Chemistry                 3

Spanish                      1

Total:                         11 x 4 (the highest grade possible) = 44 (total hour points)

4. Compute the total credit points

The next step is to multiply each subject’s number score with their respective credit hours.  So if you got an A or 4 in Biology and your hour point is 4, your credit points for Biology is 16. In Physics you got a B or a 3 then multiply it with its hour points which is also 3, your credit points for Physics is 9. Your grade in Chemistry is 2 and your hour points for the subject is 3 so the credit points for Chemistry is 6. Spanish on the other hand has a score of 1 and 1 hour point so your credit points for this subject is 1. Next, add up all the credit points to get your total credit point.

Subject            Grade             Number replacement              hour points      credit points

Biology            A                             4                      x          4                      =          16

Physics           B                              3                      x          3                      =           9

Chemistry     C                              2                      x          3                      =           6

Spanish          D                              1                      x          1                      =           1

Total Credit Points             32

5. Calculate your GPA

Now that you have all the elements, you can compute your GPA by simply dividing your credit points by your hour points. In our example, we have 32 credit points and 44 hour point. Divide 32 by 44 and you will get 0.727272727. Multiply this by 4 which is the highest grade possible will give you a 2.9 GPA.

Your GPA is not the only thing that will assure you of a good job or a bright future after college. However, knowing how to compute your high school GPA will guide and remind you to work hard so that you will have more chances of getting into good schools, or become recipients of scholarships and eventually land you a good job.