USA credit hour and GPA

Each subject is called a course. Each course is worth certain points called credit hours or semester hours. You will observe that most of the courses are worth 3 credits. As a student of MS, you will have to complete 30 credits. If you are doing MS with thesis, you need to do 24 credit hours from course work, 3 credits for research and 3 credits for thesis. Research and Thesis are commonly counted together as 6.

You would be wondering what is 500 level, 600 level courses people are talking about. Well, different Universities have different conventions. In ASU, 100 to 400 level courses are Undergraduate courses. 500 and upwards are considered graduate level courses. However, there are certain 400 level courses (max of 12 credits) that can be taken by a graduate student and will be coded as 591. For example, undergrad maths courses can read as MAT 101, MAT 201 and so on whereas if you have graduate maths courses, they will read as MAT 501, MAT 601 and so on. Along with the courses related to your specialization you need to have 6 credits from out of specialization courses. For instance, if your specialization is DSP and Communication, courses from Control Engg or VLSI can serve as out of specialization. These are referred to breath requirements.

There are different schemes of examination that we might not be aware of before. We have open book exams, open notes exam, take home exams and our formal way of examination as well.

GPA is your score. There are different scales on which GPA can be calculated. ASU and SDSU for example, does on a scale of 4. GPA 3.5 on a scale of 4 means you have got 3.4 out of 4. At the end of the semester, you will be given Grades 'A', 'B', 'C' ... Some professors also give +/- like 'A-' and so on. each grade corresponds to certain points, for example, A = 4 on a scale of 4. The following example shows how GPA is computed:-

Suppose you have scored 'A' in 3 credit subject and 'B' in a 2 credit subject. then you cumulative point is 4x3+3x 2 = 18 (assuming A=4 and B=3). So, your GPA will be 18/(3+2) = 3.6. The total points come in the numerator and the total credits go at the denominator.