Troubleshooting Incorrect GPAs: How to Avoid Going Down the GPA Rabbit Hole

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What three letters can make or break your students getting that college acceptance letter? G-P-A. Since such a seemingly tiny number can drastically affect a student's Higher Ed future, it's important to get it right! While the setup of a GPA calculation is quite simple, there are many ways that the values being calculated can still be wrong for one, some, or even all students. Finding out the "why" can make you feel like you are being led down the GPA Rabbit Hole to the point of no return, but never fear! Here are some tricks of the trade for troubleshooting incorrect GPAs in Registrar's Office.

Trick of the trade #1: Compare your hand calculation to your calculation in EE
If you say that what Registrar's Office is calculating doesn't match what you calculated manually, check out how your manual calculation compares to what the GPA calculation is set up to do. If your hand calculation doesn't match what is set up in Registrar's Office, then it will be nearly impossible to get matching values.

This calculation can be accessed in two ways:
1. In Configuration, Registrars Setup, GPA Calculations
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2. In Grades , Run Calculations, open a new or saved GPA parameter and just double-click the calculation to open on the General tab:
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If you're unsure how the GPA calculation should be set up, check out How to Define GPA Calculations.


Trick of the Trade #2: View the Sample Calculation
If you mark the box to Show calculations for each student (as shown in bottom right of the picture above), this outputs the sample calculation for every student included in the GPA run. Marking this wonderful little box will give you the system's calculation on the control report, which steps out every course, marking column, grade, weight, factor and credit that is included in the final GPA product.Tip 2 Pic 1
This sample may be the key to understanding why your GPAs may be incorrect. For example, maybe you notice that Math 101 is missing from the calculation for all students. That could mean that the Math 101 course record is missing the GPA type in the Grading tab for the academic year you are running the GPAs for. Or you may notice your calculation is taking some grades and multiplying them by zero. This could be due to your calculation being set to multiple the grade by the weight specified on the course, and your course has a weight of '0' for that GPA type on the course Grading tab.


Trick of the Trade #3: Make sure you are not accidentally adding more weight to your courses than you need
Like me when the winter season rolls around (or anytime there is cheesecake in my fridge), it is easy to put on more weight than is intended. Unlike me, this weight can be easily dropped in order to fix your GPA values. Normally schools choose to use one avenue or the other when weighting GPAs, but of course this can vary based on the needs of your school. Take a look at BB155265 for more information on the two ways you can weight your courses. Once you know which method you'd like to use, double check your setup to make sure you've defined your settings correctly.


Trick of the Trade #4: Check your translation tables
The GPA view of translation tables is often forgotten when troubleshooting incorrect GPAs. If you're calculating GPAs using the GPA Equivalent, verify the correct equivalent is listed for the GPA type you're calculating. Make sure your grades have the box marked to Use in GPA calculations for the GPA type you're calculating. If this box is not checked for an A, all A's will be overlooked when running GPAs for students, and I won't need to explain to you why that could spell 'disaster' for when students send out their transcripts to Harvard and Yale!

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For more information about how to correct these issues plus more tips and tricks to troubleshooting GPAs, check out this fabulous Knowledgebase article: How to Troubleshoot Incorrect GPAs. It even includes a handy dandy demo (and who doesn't love a good demo)!
News Blackbaud K-12 Education Solutions™ Blog 06/24/2013 3:59pm EDT

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