GPA vs CGPA
GPA and CGPA are terms that are commonly heard in the world of education. These terms refer to different systems of grading or giving grades to students based upon their academic performance in different subjects. While marks are given to students in junior classes, the system of grading is prevalent in higher education. The confusion between GPA and CGPA is because of the fact that some colleges and universities differentiate between the two grading systems and give more importance to one over another while deciding admission of students. Let us take a closer look at the two grading systems.
GPA
GPA stands for grade point average, and it is the average of the grades obtained by a student in a semester or simply a term of studies in various courses that he has taken. This GPA reflects the achievement level of the student and reflects his scholastic abilities allowing teachers to judge his performance.
There are in general five grades namely A, B, C, D, and F where A is the highest and F is the grade that stands for fail. GPA is normally in a range of up to 4.0 or 5.0 where each grade reflects a range of marks obtained by a student in a course. In different countries, different grades have different range of marks obtained. In general, A reflects very good marks in the range of 85-100. To calculate the GPA of a student, his total grade points are divided by attempted credit hours. To get to grade points, his grades are multiplied by credit hours of the course.
CGPA
Cumulative grade point average is simply called CGPA. It is the mean of the GPA of a student that he has obtained in college or university, in the courses that he has taken. To arrive at CGPA, grade points obtained by a student in all semesters are added and divided by the sum of his total credit hours. If there are two semesters in a year, a student gets CGPA for a year, and the grades in the semester get him SGPA. So, if there are 8 semesters in a degree course, just add up the SGPA and divide by 8 to get to the CGPA of the student.
What is the difference between GPA and CGPA?
• GPA and CGPA are grade systems used in different colleges and universities to assign an evaluative measure of a student’s scholastic abilities.
• Both GPA and CGPA are reflective of a student’s performance in a semester or the entire course that he has studied, but some colleges give more importance to GPA than CGPA while granting admissions to students.
• GPA is calculated for a single term or a year, whereas CGPA is calculated for the entire duration of a course.
• Many colleges have a cut off GPA for admission into different courses. This means that a student must consistently obtain high GPA.
• CGPA is for a whole course which means that a high CGPA requires good GPA in all years.