When applying for accounting school, keep in mind that there are a number of different factors that can affect whether a particular school will accept you or not, but one of the factors that typically has a significant impact on a school’s decision is your Grade Point Average (GPA). This is because most schools consider your GPA to be an indication not only of your past academic performance, but also of your future performance as well. In other words, most schools consider an individual’s GPA to be an indication of the type of student that an individual is and the type of professional that an individual will become. Your GPA, as a result, plays an extremely important role in whether an accounting school will accept or deny your application; therefore, it is important to know what your GPA actually is.
Fortunately, determining your GPA is relatively simple because an individual’s GPA is the average grade that an individual has obtained during a specific time period such as a single term/semester, usually expressed on a 4-point scale. In other words, an individual’s GPA is his or her average grade converted into a number from 0-4. In order to determine your GPA, you must take each of the grades that you have earned and convert those grades into the appropriate number of points.
- For high school courses, this means that an “A+” or an “A” is a 4.0, an “A-” is a 3.7, a “B+” is a 3.3, a “B” is a 3.0, a “B-” is a 2.7, a “C+” is a 2.3, a “C” is a 2.0, a “C-” is a 1.7, a “D+” is a 1.3, a “D” is a 1, a “D-” is a 0.7, and anything less than a “D-” is a 0.
- Colleges and universities, on the other hand, typically use a slightly different grading system, so an “A” is a 4.0, an “AB” is a 3.5, a “B” is a 3.0, a “BC” is a 2.5, a C is a “2.0”, a CD is a 1.5, a D is a 1.0, and an F is 0. (It is important to note that there are some colleges and universities that issue half grades, such as “AB” or “CD,” but this is not always the case, and there are a number of schools that simply use A, B, C, D, and F for their grades).
- Once you have converted all of your grades into the appropriate number of points, you can determine your GPA by adding all of the numbers together and dividing the sum by the number of grades. For example, if you wanted to determine your GPA for your senior year of high school and your grades were A, A-, B, C, B, C+, B-, your GPA would be equal to (4.0 + 3.7 + 3.0 + 2.0 + 3.0 + 2.3 + 2.7) / 7, which equals 2.96 (GPAs are typically rounded to two decimal places).
- The average GPA that an individual must have in order to get into a particular school varies considerably from school to school, but the average GPA for a student entering an accounting school is typically somewhere in the 2.8 to 3.5 range. This means that an individual with a 2.96 GPA would probably have a pretty good chance of getting into an accounting program.
- It is important to note, however, that an individual’s GPA is not the only factor that a school will take into consideration, and it is possible for an individual to be accepted even if his or her GPA falls below this range.