Your QCA Explained
- Details
- Category: Academic Life
- Published on Tuesday, 12 August 2008 12:48
What is a QCA (Quality Credit Average)?
Ok, we can look at this in two ways, the complicated way or the easy way – we choose the latter. Basically, when your grades are added together at the end of a semester, your overall results are given to you in numerical form. Ultimately, this number will decide what level of degree you graduate with. Its measured out of 4.0 and your first year grades are not counted so don’t panic BUT you do need a QCA of at least 2.0 to go into the next year!
Here’s the breakdown of the degrees:
| Award | QCA |
| First Class Honours (1.1) | 3.40 |
| Second Class Honours (2.1) | 3.00 |
| Second Class Honours (2.2) | 2.60 |
| Third Class Honours | 2.00 |
Some of your grades are ‘double weighted’ which means they’re worth twice as much so they have a bigger impact on your QCA. First and Second Year are not double weighted. Here’s a breakdown of the weighting:
*If you’re doing Psychology, Year 3 is double weighted.
Also, it’s important to add that ‘Home TP’ is double weighted.
If you want to know even more info about the QCA, there’s loads in the Student Handbook.
How to calculate your QCA
The college has software that does that math to figure out your QCA but if you want to see how it’s done it’s explained in the Student Handbook.
If you want to calculate your QCA or possible variations of your QCA, call into Student Services and they should be able to help.