Hi all! As promised I am posting a pdf transcript that you can edit and print. It does not do calculations so you will have to do those things yourself. So let me explain how those things work. First type in all the pertinent information from graduation date to school information and student information. Social security numbers are not required on transcripts. That is only required for financial aid applications.
Course Information
If you have an AP or Honors class you need to type it like the below examples.
Example- AP: Calculus AB
Example- Honors: Apologia Biology 1(2nd Edition)
This makes it easier for the college to identify those classes. How do you know if a course is an AP or Honors? In order to claim AP credit your child must have taken an AP test and passed it. It is not enough to take the AP course. In fact you don’t have to take an AP course, just the AP test to get AP credit for it. AP tests can also count as college credit so they don’t have to take that class their freshman year. Check with the colleges you are applying to see what applies.
Honors courses are harder to determine. Some curriculums by default are considered “Honors” because of the rigor of the curriculum. If you complete the textbook and all the activities (worksheets & assignments) then it is an honors course. Two well known brands are Apologia and Saxon. Anything by those publishers are considered honors courses (if you complete the coursework – you might need to keep the tests to show it). However you can adapt any course to be an honors course. The requirement is 120 hours of documented coursework.
The reason this is important is that an AP course gets an extra 1 point on the GPA. So an “A” in an AP course is a 5.0. An honors course gets an additional .5 of credit so a “B” in an honors course gets a 3.5 GPA.
All other classes just type in a general description of the course. For instance Algebra 1, Biology, US History, etc. You do not need to extrapolate on the publisher and edition UNLESS you are going for that honors credit.
In the example below I have already typed in the classes my student took in grade 9 and the final averages for each. Next type in the credit for each class. Typically a one semester course is .5 of a credit and a full year is 1 credit. In the example below, my student only took piano for about 5 months and decided it wasn’t for them. But I am giving them credit for the effort because they did well while in the class. Other examples of half credits are 1 semester of Health and 1 semester of Physical Education.
Now we get to the calculations. Your GPA is determined by the grade scale. Mississippi uses a 10 point grade scale as depicted on the bottom of the page. You can edit this if you prefer.
So the above courses of study would end up with the below credits.
In a pass/fail class “Pass” = 4.0 and “Fail” = 0. Now we do the average. Add up and average all the grades and ignore the pass course.
Add the credits (even the pass class) which equals 6.5.
Now to average the GPA. This is harder. The pass class is again ignored.
Each GPA is multiplied times the credit it receives and then it’s averaged by the total credits (minus the pass class).
Total number of credits minus the pass/fail class. 6.5 – .5 = 6 That is the number we’ll divide by.
(4.0 * 1) + (4.0 * 1) + (3.0 * 1) + (2.0 * 1) + (3.0 * .5) + (4.0 * .5) = 19.5 / 6 = 3.25 GPA
Whew!!! Do that for each year of high school and then you get to the really fun part. This is why the other post was a self calculating excel spreadsheet. It does all this for you!
Summary by Grade
After you have each year entered you update the summary box. I am going to give you a sample set of final rows so you can see it for yourself.
9th Final AVG – 89 Credits – 6.5 GPA – 3.25
10th Final AVG – 90 Credits – 6.0 GPA – 3.45
11th Final AVG – 91 Credits – 6.5 GPA – 3.54
12th Final AVG – 91 Credits – 6.0 GPA – 3.67
(keep in mind that when you start sending out transcripts in the fall of their senior year, you won’t actually have averages or GPAs for that year, only a course list and potential credits.)
The first one is easy you just type in the 9th grade final row.
For 10th grade you add the AVGs for years 9 and 10 and divide by 2. Add the GPAs for years 9 and 10 and divide by 2. Type in the total credits including “pass” classes.
For 11th grade, Add the average grades from each year and divide by 3. Add the GPAs from each year and divide by 3. Type the total credits earned.
The reason I am spelling it out so specifically is that you might be tempted to just add the 11th grade GPA to the 10th Cumulative GPA and divide by 2, but you will not get a cumulative GPA that way. Cumulative in this use means evenly distributed between the years of information gathered. So each year has to be added on its own merit and averaged equally.
NOTE: For the 12th grade year add all 4 averages and divide by 4. Add all 4 GPAs and divide by 4.
Cumulative Summary (9th – 12th)
Finally this summary puts all the years of work together in one final number. Enter the total of all credits first. Simply add the Credits earned across the bottom of the Summary by Grade. In the second box, “GPA Credits,” you must add the credits that were not “pass” classes.
GPA points are the total number of weighted GPA points for classes with grades. So you will have to manually multiply the credit for each class that had a numeric grade by the GPA point it received and then add those up.
The final GPA is the GPA Points divided by the GPA credits.
With that you are done! The below link is for this pdf file. I strongly urge you to use the excel spreadsheet if you can. It does all this for you without the headache. I think you can save the excel transcript file to google docs and open it as a spreadsheet without having excel on your computer but, I have not tried it. Good luck and I am more than happy to help you figure it out if you get stuck!
Mississippi Homeschool Info 