Grade Point Average Calculation

The main purpose for an academic update is to calculate and revise a student's grade point average using the following steps:

·       For each Student Course History, the program decides which grid to update for the student. The Transcript Division on the Student Course History row identifies which grid should be added or updated. Remember that if a student has taken courses in two divisions (e.g., graduate and undergraduate) at your institution, two grids will exist for that student.

·       Next, the update program determines the attempted hours, earned hours, GPA hours, and total quality points for the Student Course History. The program uses the grade scale, credit type, and grade from the Student Course History row to access the Grade Table. Once accessed, the Grade Table row tells the program whether to add the Student course History credit hours to attempted hours, earned hours, and GPA hours. The Grade Table also indicates the number of quality points per credit hour. The program multiplies the credit hours by the quality points to determine the total quality points for the course.

·       The program decides where the course fits in the different rows of the grid: transfer, local, career, and term. Remember, the academic record update program does not update the grid row labeled "work."

·       The program accesses existing grid information from the Student Division Master table and the Student Term Summary by Division table. Course totals for attempted hours, earned hours, GPA hours and Quality Points are added to the grid. Then the program recalculates the GPA column for each of the rows on the grid (GPA = Quality Points GPA hours).

The student's GPA for each of their divisions will be updated on the Student Division Master. In addition to career GPA, this table also contains term GPA information. The program will update these columns with the GPA information from the latest term, and the most recent date when the student's academic record was updated will be indicated. This is true for other GPA-related columns (Hours Attempted, Hours Earned, GPA Hours, Quality Points, and GPA).

If the Update Academic Record During Grade Entry checkbox is selected on the Registration Configuration window, the GPA will be updated when you enter grades on the Grade Entry window.

The values displayed in the Hours from Most Recent Academic Update group box on the Student Division tab default from the most recent row of the Student Term Summary by Division table.

The academic update will place a student's term GPA information in the Student Term Summary by Division table that contains one row per student, per division, per year and term. Each time the academic record for a year and term is updated, the program changes the student's career GPA on any subsequent Term Summary rows.

You may find it necessary to calculate GPAs for selected student courses (such as courses within a students major). In this case, the special option called Work Quality Points and GPA may be used and the Major table will provide a way to select a student's major courses for the GPA calculation. Advising also calculates GPAs by major (or degree plan). If your institution uses Advising, you probably will not need to use the Major/Minor table in Registration.

The Major/Minor and Courses window allows you to list the courses in each major that you wish to include in a major GPA calculation. During implementation of Registration, you can decide which course components the Major table will use. This table must be complete before you run the option to calculate the GPA for selected courses.