BY EMMA KELLAWAY

A Monash University student has developed a free mobile app to help his peers calculate their Weighted Average Marks (WAM) and Grade Point Averages (GPA).  

The Academia app, developed by Monash University student Ashwin Gupta, allows students to enter in their subjects and assessment marks to calculate their current WAM and GPA. 

The app also allows students to set reminders for upcoming due dates and organise their studies accordingly.

Mr Gupta, a fourth year Bachelor of Commerce and IT student, said he developed the app after becoming frustrated by how time consuming the WAM calculator on the Monash website is. 

“Monash’s website for calculating GPA and WAM is quite inconvenient because of having to enter the subject grades twice to get each score,” Mr Gupta said.

After searching for a similar calculator elsewhere, Mr Gupta said he never found one that fitted his exact needs. 

Having just completed a subject in mobile app development, he decided to “make it” himself. 

“I just thought of features that would be really beneficial to myself and other people," he said.

“I started the app last year in semester two, but didn’t make much progress until winter break [this year], where I really got to work."

The app has received 388 downloads since its release on July 21, 2021. 

Mr Gupta said developing the app was “never about making money” but he is looking at ways to profit from it. 

“I may monetise the app in a way that benefits users by advertising graduate and internship roles from companies,” he said. 

The Monash student community has responded positively to the new software.

Monash University Bachelor of Commerce and Law student Ruchika Bilagi said she uses the app to keep track of her scores and estimate what grades she needs in order to meet her GPA goal. 

“We haven’t had any sort of app that’s similar to this so it’s great to see,”  Ms Bilagi said.

Before the app was developed Ms Bilagi said she “used excel and worked backwards to determine what score [she] needed”. A process that was “time consuming and taxing”, she said.

Ms Bilagi said she liked how the mobile interface made it “so easy and accessible” to log her results and save her mark predictions to look back on.

“For those who are in their penultimate and final years, as you look towards the workforce, it’s definitely handy having it there,” Ms Bilagi said.

While the app is targeted at Monash students, Mr Gupta hopes to expand its functions to include other universities’ WAM calculator systems, so that it can help more students.