How do I determine my final grade average for college? I know my grade average from my school of graduation (3.75) but I went to junior college, too. To get my final grade point average, do I take each grade and muliply by the class credit credit hours total the results and divide by total credit hours using grades from both my grades from junior college and my school graduation?
It depends on how your school of graduation accepts the credits from the junior college. Do they take them on a pass/fail basis, or do they take the grades too? The easist way to determine this is by looking at your transcript.
Zev Steinhardt
I looked on my transfer form and all my classes transferred with an “S” grade, which I assume means satisfactory. So would my final grade average be the grade point average of my school of graduation?
I’m asking because I am planning to go to law school and I want to see where my grades stand.
When I apply to law school do I need to provide the law school with transcripts from both my junior college and school of graduation?
Yes then (excluding any pass/fail courses you took at your school).
In any event, your GPA should be on your transcript, no?
Zev Steinhardt
I don’t have a copy of my transcript. I am ordering it tomorrow.
In that case, you’ll find out tomorrow… 
Zev Steinhardt
Well, I know my final grade point average at my school of graduation was 3.75. But when law schools look at my grade point average will they say "But he went to junior college too, let’s average in those grades regardless if his school of graduation took those grades pass/fail or not?
Ah, never having applied to any post-graduate school, I could not say. Hopefully, one of our legal Dopers will stop in with an answer…
Zev Steinhardt
You can’t get your (unofficial) transcript or degree audit online?
Well, I flunked out of college with a 1.75 or so. I just wasn’t interested in school. After a few semesters at a community college, I applied to a state university and graduated summa cum laude with a 3.98.
When I applied to grad school, I bluntly stated in my personal statement that I failed and blah blah. I got in to my first choice with no problems.
I imagine the only time it might matter is if you’re applying to an elite school where there is a lot of competition.
You won’t find your overall GPA from your transcript - you’ll need to go through the procedure you outlined in the OP. Each school (in my limited experience) only includes the grades from its own institution - they’ll only accept transfer credit with at least a certain grade, but that grade won’t get listed on your transcript.
The question of how much law schools will care depends both on your situation and where you’re applying. If you went to junior college, barely scraped by (or flunked out), left school, did other stuff for a good long while, and then realized that you needed to turn your life around, resulting in your reenrollment and current admirable GPA, they probably won’t care much. If you just got your associate’s degree, then transferred directly, they’ll probably count it much like they would count your freshman and sophomore year if you’d done them at your graduating institution.
IIRC (and it’s been a long while) you will send all of your transcripts to the LSDAS, and then they will tell you (and the law schools you apply to) what your GPA is.
Again, IIRC - they do that to try and provide some kind of standardization across different schools with different grading policies and practices, as well as for people in exactly your situation.
I have served on several graduate admissions comm.s for Computer Science depts, so YMMV.
Keep each school’s GPA separate. Trying to combine them only leads to trouble. E.g., one school might require 128 credit hours to graduate, another 186. Quarters, semesters, 3 or 4 hours for a standard class. Makes general averaging quite difficult. (And what if you have a place where the top grade is a “5”?)
For the most part, the GPA of the last place you attended, esp. if you got a degree there, counts by far the most.
I used GPAs mainly as a rough guide to how well a student did. A student with a 3.4 and one with a 3.6 are not really distinguishable. Grades in certain courses were looked at more carefully.
ftg, are you asying that most likely they will look at my 3.75 grade point average and not worry about my junior college gpa?
I should say I don’t think my junior college GPA is bad. It was 3.12 for my first semester, which was my worst semester. I think I ended up with around 3.5.
Homer, I would not ignore it, it would just not be as important, in grad school admissions.
If there is a problem anywhere, with a reasonable explanation, you can give it in the “statement of purpose” (or whatever) part. E.g, if you had a family emergency, etc. As long as it was clear that it was very long ago or short term and that you have since been a decent student.
Note that GPAs are kinda “flexible” in such evaluations. A high GPA from a diploma mill isn’t as good as a fair GPA from a really tough place. So your junior college and senior college GPAs are probably not trivially scalable.
In the forms I have seen, there are several lines for all schools attended, with a sep. GPA slot for each.
But admissions people have brains, they size up things reasonably well and take many factors into account.
Some extreme cases do occur: E.g., 5000 applicants for 10 spots. Anything the least bit non-perfect and your folder is in the big pile in a flash.
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- I can’t either. The place I went to is putting in software over three years to do this, and they started five years ago. I can just phone up the records department and ask, however.
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- I can’t either. The place I went to is putting in software over three years to do this, and they started five years ago. I can just phone up the records department and ask, however.
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