A Comparative Study of GPA Calculation Methods in the Academic Credit System

Abstract

Academic credit system (ACS) is an instructional management system in higher education. Based on this system, grade point average (GPA) is the main measurement to summarize undergraduates’ overall performance. The paper aims to compare commonly used GPA calculation methods, then analyzes the different GPA calculation results based on the unique data of some university. In this study, experimental results show that GPA calculation method based on the standard scores is the most scientific and reasonable. At last, the paper provides information and advice to use GPA for acknowledgement, awards, and as partial evidence for admission to other colleges and universities.