School Tips: What is GWA?

An acronym that stands for General Weighted Average. This is the average grade that you will get after your grades per subject are multiplied to their respective unit weights and divided by the total units you got. Medyo malabo ba? Eto example:






Math              2.75   <------ sample grade of subject   
English           2.25   <------ sample grade of subject   
Filipino           3.00   <------ sample grade of subject   


Math              3 units    <------ sample units of subject   
English           3 units    <------ sample units of subject   
Filipino           16 units   <------ sample units of subject (kunwari BS Filipino Language major in Linguistics sya - ewan ko lang kung may course talaga na ganito)   


To compute for the GWA:

1. Grade of Subject multiplied by Units = x
2. Get the sum of all x's.
3. Divide the sum by the total number of units (i-aadd mo lang lahat ng units mo, in our example 22 units sya)
4. and there you have it, GWA


Balik tayo sa example natin:


Math              2.75   x 3 units  = 8.25

English           2.25   x 3 units  = 6.75
Filipino           3.00   x 16 units = 48

(8.25) + (6.75) + (48) = 63

63 divided by total number of units (22 units) = 2.86

So the GWA in our example is 2.86.

What is GWA for?

Knowing how to compute for GWA is very important for two reasons: First is when your aspiring for honors. Second is when your actually computing to know what grade should you get with other subjects to barely pass.

I suggest that you focus more on subjects with greater unit weight. But that isn't always the case. Based from my experience during my college freshman year, we (me and my classmates, and my batchmates and almost everyone from the UST College of Nursing) really had a lot of difficulty with our major subject.. CHEMISTRY. So what we did (well most of us) was to focus on getting high grades with the minor subjects to compensate for the low grade we had in Chemistry.

I say, its all about strategy on how you will manage to get a high GWA. But of course, I'm not suggesting that you just study your minors and make "bahala na si batman" your motto when dealing with minors. That's why if you course is BS Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, putting all your efforts in subjects such as Theology would be completely insane, you should have entered the seminary/convent instead.

** It is also very important to not that GWA equivalents may vary per institution. For example in De La Salle University, they rank 5 or singko as being the highest possible attainable grade while in the University of Santo Tomas, getting singko means you failed. Another system is the one employed in Ateneo de Manila University where their grades are not based on numeric characters rather they come as A's, B's, C's and so forth.