GPA and CGPA Explained

If you are a college student or somebody who has completed college, you would definitely know these 2 terms — GPA & CGPA. These 2 are of paramount importance in the life of any college student for 2 reasons:

• It lets you know where you stand among your batchmates
• Most companies have a minimum CGPA cut-off to be eligible to sit for their hiring process

Hence, it is crucial that as a college student, you understand what these 2 terms are.

First let us see the expansion of these 2 terms:

GPA is short for Grade Point A verage

CGPA is short for Cumulative Grade Point A verage

During our school days, we had 5–6 subjects each year. A final exam was held at the end which was marked for out of 100. Your mark in that year was taken as the average of your mark in all the subjects

For example, consider the all-important Class 12 Board Exams. They are considered sacrosanct since the marks you get in them decide how the rest of your life will turn out to be in most cases

Suppose you had 5 subjects — English, Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Computer Science and your marks were as follows

Your total was computed as the sum total of your marks in the above 5 subjects = 459/500

Your percentage was 91.8% — This was the all-important score that decided your college admissions in the next few months.

But once you enter college, you are introduced to new terms. Gone are the percentages. You hear terms like Credits, Grade, GPA, CGPA etc. You do not understand them

Let us look at these terms and what they mean

The Basics

Credit: This basically implies how many lecture hours you will have per week. A 3 credit course implies 3 hours of lectures per week. Similarly, a 2 credit course implies 2 hours of lectures per week

Grade: In colleges, a letter grade is assigned for each subject. Your mark is converted into a letter grade. This varies depending on the college:

In engineering colleges, a 10-point grading point system is followed. The point assigned to each grade is called as a grade point

The below grading system was followed in my engineering college. U, W, I grades indicate failure in a course due to various reasons (low attendance, failure to clear the exam etc)

Based on the mark scored by you in a particular subject (total of Internal exams, Assignments, Projects, End-Term Exam), a grade is assigned. This can be assigned based on 2 systems of grading:

This type of grading is a very rigid system. Different courses might have varying levels of difficulty. Faculties might vary in how they award marks. Some faculties are very liberal in giving marks while some might be stingy. The disadvantage is that, the difficulty of the course is not reflected in the grade.

If suppose the same course is taught by 2 different faculties for 2 different batches. One of the faculty is very strict in awarding marks and the highest mark itself is only 80 with the average being around 55. This would imply that most students would end up with a C grade or D grade. But if the other faculty is very liberal in giving marks and the class average itself is around 75 — Most students of that batch would end up getting really good grades. Hence, absolute grading does not count these factors. This issue is resolved by relative grading

2. Relative Grading: This grading system is a more flexible one and depends on the overall class performance — the average marks of all the students, highest marks etc. It is entirely dependent on the teacher to decide what kind of grades he/she wants to give. This was the system that was followed in my engineering college. To pass the course, you had to score atleast half the class average

For example, if in a course, the average was 62 and the highest was 89. The teacher would follow a grading system like:

In another course, if the faculty was stingy in awarding marks or if the paper was tougher, the class highest itself would only be 70 with the class average around 35 (believe me, we had courses like this), the grading pattern adopted by the faculty would be slightly different

In relative grading, you do not have to worry about your absolute score or the marks of students in the other batch. You only have to worry about where you stand relative to your class. If your score is only 70, but if yours is the highest mark, you have a high chance of an S grade (this is also subject to the faculty’s whims. He/She could decide not to give S grade to any student and start only from A grade). But if the class average is 80 and your score is 70, then do not expect a very good grade (unless the faculty is very lenient in grading)

Armed with the basic knowledge of what is a Credit, Grade, Grade Point, let us now venture into what is a GPA and how it is calculated

The Grade Point Average (GPA)

The Grade Point Average or more popularly known as GPA, is the average of the grades of the grades obtained by you in a particular term/semester. It is not merely the simple average(as in the case of Class 12 marks) but the weighted average. Let me explain

Suppose, in a term/semester you have 5 subjects. Some subjects are 3 credits, some are 2 credits (most of our laboratory courses in engineering were 2 credits). Assume your grades in the various courses are as follows:

The GPA is calculated using the below formula:

The steps involved are as follows:

• You take each subject and multiply the number of credits with the grade point in that subject
• Add them all together — this gives you the numerator
• Now, you sum the total number of credits — this gives you the denominator
• Dividing these 2 gives you the GPA

In the above case, the numerator = 3*8 + 3*9 + 2*10 + 2*8 + 3*7 = 108

The denominator = Total number of credits = 13

Hence, your GPA = 108/13 = 8.3076

This is a weighted average and not just a simple average. A simple average would have meant you just average the grade points in all subjects (like how it is done for your Class 12 marks)

Taking a simple average of the grades scored above gives 42/5 = 8.40. But the GPA we calculated is 8.3076. Why this difference?

The reason is related to George Orwells’ Animal Farm: All subjects are equal. But some subjects are more equal than others. In weighted average, some subjects have a higher weightage than others. For example, a 3 credit course has a higher weightage on your GPA than a 2 credit course. Let us break down the formula of GPA to understand better:

Here, we see that each 3-credit course has a 3/13 = 23% influence on your GPA and each 2-credit course has 2/13 = 15.4% influence on your GPA. This clearly shows that a 3-credit course has more importance in deciding the GPA than a 2-credit course.

So, one of the most important things to note is that: Focus more on courses with higher credit since they contribute more towards your GPA. Higher credit=> More impact on GPA

This also implies, an increase of 1 grade in a 3-credit course would increase your GPA by 0.23. Assume that in Subject 1, your grade was A instead of B and calculate your GPA. It would be 8.54. This increase is equal to the Credits in that subject/Total credits = 3/13 = 0.23. Similarly, for a 2-credit course, the increase would be 2/13 = 0.154. You can try it out for yourself

Like this, for each term/semester, your GPA is calculated and these are used for the calculation of the CGPA. In the next section, we will look at how the CGPA is calculated. The calculation of the CGPA is similar to that of the GPA

Note: The GPA is also sometimes referred to as SGPA or Semester Grade Point A verage. Both terms mean the same. In this article, I will be using only GPA so as to not confuse.

The Cumulative Grade Point Average

The CGPA or Cumulative Grade Point Average calculates your cumulative GPA till that particular point of time. Some basic differences between GPA & CGPA are that:

• The GPA is calculated for a particular term/semester whereas, the CGPA is calculated overall by including the GPA’s of all the semesters/terms completed
• The GPA is calculated by taking the grades scored in all subjects in a particular semester. The CGPA is calculated by taking the GPA’s scored in all semesters till that point of time

In short, the CGPA can be thought of as a macro-level version of the GPA

The formula for CGPA calculation is the same as that for GPA. Instead of subjects, it is GPA. Instead of subject-wise credits, it is term-wise credits.

Suppose a student is done with 4 semesters. His/her GPA in each semester is as follows:

Let us understand the CGPA formula with this example:

For Term-1, your GPA & CGPA are both same since you are done with only one term. Hence, your CGPA for Term-1 is 8.31

For Term-2, you multiply the credits in Term-1 with the GPA scored in Term-1. You similarly do for Term-2 and add the two values. This gives you the numerator

For the denominator, you add the credits in both the terms

Numerator = 8.31*15 + 8.9*18 = 284.85

Denominator = 15+18 = 33

Hence, CGPA at end of Term-2 = 284.85/33 = 8.6318

Again, you see that, this is a weighted average. Taking a simple average would have yielded a CGPA of 8.605.

We see that the GPA of Term-1 has 45.5% GPA while the GPA of Term-2 has a higher weightage of 54.5%. The fact that he/she scored a higher GPA in Term-2 helped to boost his CGPA up by a little more

If suppose, the student had scored a lesser GPA in Term-2 (like 7.5 or 7.8 etc) the CGPA would have been lesser. You can calculate on your own and see what the CGPA would be

Another take-off is: If any semester has a higher number of credits compared to others, put in more effort in that term

Now, let us calculate for Term-3

The numerator = 8.31*15+8.9*18+8.25*13.5 = 396.225

Denominator = 15+18+13.5 = 46.5

Hence, CGPA = 8.521

Similarly calculating, we get the CGPA of Term-4 is 8.491. (I leave it to you to verify it)

We see that the CGPA has decreased in Term-3. This is because the GPA of Term-3 is lesser than that of the previous 2 terms

This is all for this post. In my next post, I will explain some observations and insights I have drawn about the CGPA and also answer a basic question most of you might have:

“I have a CGPA of 7.9 at present. How much should I score in the next term so that my CGPA becomes 8?”

In the below section, I have given another alternate formula for CGPA calculation. If you felt the above post itself was above your head, kindly ignore the below section

One point I would like to stress is that though your college provides you your GPA & CGPA at the end of each term when the results are announced, it also helps that you calculate it at your end and have your own personal copy. The above calculations might seem tedious to do by hand, but they will take hardly 5 minutes in Microsoft Excel. This ensures that you keep track of your performance and also helps you to verify whether the results provided by your college are correct and without any error in calculation

Thanks for reading!!!

For Those Interested:

Alternate Formula For CGPA

In the above formula, each time we have to calculate the CGPA, we need to take the GPA from Term-1 onwards each time while calculating CGPA

For example, while calculating the CGPA at the end of Term-3, we need to factor in the GPA of Term-1, 2, 3 etc. Next, while calculating the CGPA for Term-4, we again need to consider the GPA of Term-1, 2, 3 along with Term-4.

Instead, we can use the CGPA of Term-3 in the calculation for CGPA of Term-4 instead of having to re-invent the wheel each time

That alternative formula is:

All you have to take is take the CGPA till the previous term and multiply it with the total credits till the previous term. To this, add the product of the current term’s GPA & credits in this term. Divide this by the total credits till now to get the present CGPA

Let us try applying this to the above example and calculate the CGPA of Term-3

• CGPA at the end of Term-2 = 8.632
• Total credits at the end of Term-2 = 15+18 = 33
• GPA in Term-3 = 8.25
• Credits in Term-3 = 13.5
• Numerator = 8.632*33 + 8.25*13.5 = 396.231
• Denominator (total credits) = 15+18+13.5 = 46.5

Hence, CGPA = 396.231/46.5 = 8.521

We see that we get the same CGPA.

Both the formulas are the same. A little bit of tweaking in the original formula will the yield the alternate formula. Those who feel that this formula is complex can stick to the earlier formula which is simpler

Thanks For Reading!!!

Originally published at http://infinitesimallysmall.com on May 1, 2022.