Hi everyone, I'm a little confused about the terminology. What exactly is a cumulative GPA? Is it the same as weighted GPA? Or is it more like an average of all my GPAs from each semester? Please help me figure this out!
Hi there! A cumulative GPA is the overall grade point average that represents your performance across all courses taken during your entire duration in high school. It takes into account all your grades from all your semesters and calculates an overall average.
Cumulative GPA can be either weighted or unweighted. A weighted GPA factors in the difficulty of the courses taken, such as Honors, AP, or IB classes. These advanced courses usually have a boost (e.g., adding 1.0 for AP classes), which raises the scale on which the GPA is calculated, typically up to a 5.0 or 6.0 scale instead of the standard 4.0 scale for unweighted GPAs.
An unweighted cumulative GPA, on the other hand, does not consider the difficulty of your courses, so all classes have the same weight on the 4.0 scale.
To summarize, cumulative GPA refers to the overall average of your grades, including every semester of high school. This GPA can be weighted (taking course difficulty into account) or unweighted (calculating the average without factoring in course difficulty).
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