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I began my undergraduate career at an institution that has a 4-1-4 schedule and each class counts as a 4 credit hour course. I transferred into another school that has 3 credit hours classes. When calculating my GPA, will the classes from my previous school count the same? Or will the 4 credit class from my previous school count more since they are actually "4 hour" classes?

adamforeman4 wrote:I began my undergraduate career at an institution that has a 4-1-4 schedule and each class counts as a 4 credit hour course. I transferred into another school that has 3 credit hours classes. When calculating my GPA, will the classes from my previous school count the same? Or will the 4 credit class from my previous school count more since they are actually "4 hour" classes?

Typically schools assign grade points based on your course grade. So if you get an "A" in a three credit course on a four point scale, you get 12 grade points (3*4). Then to get your GPA you divide grade points by credits.

If one class is four credits and the other is three, the four credit course's grade points would total 33% more and would have that much more impact on GPA.

However, you can take a four hour class for fewer credits. Most schools define one credit as between 12 and 16 hours of class time and a roughly equivalent amount of homework. So during a January term class, a summer class, or a quarter or trimester, you may end up with a different number of hours per week per credit.