GPA Calculator

Three things sit above this. An editable grading scale, a GPA calculator that turns your courses and credits into a grade point average, and a planning calculator that works out the GPA you need over your remaining credits to reach a target.

Set your own grade points first

Grading is not standardised, so the numbers behind the letters are not either. At one university 80 is a B-, at another it is an A-. Some schools cap the scale at 4.0 and have no A+ at all; others award 4.3 for one. A few use E rather than F for a fail.

Open the grading scale panel and change the letters, the grade points or the percentage bands. Everything below follows your version, three presets are built in, and the scale is saved in your browser and shared with the Grade Calculator, so you only set it once.

This matters more than it looks. On the default scale the sample courses give 3.663. Cap the A+ at 4.0 and nothing changes here because no course has one, but a transcript full of A+ grades moves by a tenth of a point, which is the difference between qualifying for a scholarship and missing it.

How GPA is calculated

GPA is a credit-weighted average of your grades. Each course contributes its grade points multiplied by its credits, those products are added, and the total is divided by the total credits. Credits are the weighting, which is why a 4 credit course moves your GPA twice as much as a 2 credit one.

Letter grade	Grade points
A+	4.3
A	4
A-	3.7
B+	3.3
B	3
B-	2.7
C+	2.3
C	2
C-	1.7
D+	1.3
D	1
D-	0.7
F	0
P, NP, I, W	not counted

Worked through on the default entries: Math is 3 credits at an A, so 3 × 4 = 12. English is 3 credits at a B+, so 3 × 3.3 = 9.9. History is 2 credits at an A-, so 2 × 3.7 = 7.4. That is 29.3 grade points across 8 credits, and 29.3 divided by 8 is 3.663.

Two more examples, one with letters and one with a school that grades on a 4 point numeric scale directly:

Course	Credits	Grade	Grade points
Math	4	A+	4 × 4.3 = 17.2
Physics	2	B	2 × 3 = 6
English	3	A	3 × 4 = 12
Total	9		35.2
GPA	35.2 / 9 = 3.911

Course	Credits	Score	Grade points
Biology	4	3	4 × 3 = 12
Chemistry	3	2	3 × 2 = 6
Chemistry lab	2	4	2 × 4 = 8
Total	9		26
GPA	26 / 9 = 2.889

Notice that the second example never mentions a letter. If your institution reports scores out of 4 or out of 100, switch the grade format and enter them as they are printed.

The three grade formats

Letter converts each grade through the scale, so an A is 4.0 and the result is a GPA. Percentage and point value average the numbers you type, weighted by credits, without converting them into anything. The same three courses give 3.663 as letters and 75.875 as percentages, and neither is a rounding of the other. They answer different questions.

Use percentage when your school reports a percentage average rather than a GPA, which is common outside the United States. Use point value when grades already come out of 4, 5 or 10. Use letters for a normal American transcript.

Switching to letters converts what you have already typed, so a course entered as 90 becomes an A- rather than emptying the field.

Courses that do not count

Marks such as P (pass), NP (not pass), I (incomplete) and W (withdrawal) carry no grade points. They are excluded from the average entirely, credits and all, which is what a registrar does and why a pass/fail course cannot lift or lower your GPA.

It can still affect you elsewhere. Pass/fail credits usually count toward graduation and toward full-time enrolment even though they sit outside the GPA, and some graduate programmes recalculate your GPA under their own rules.

Prior semesters and cumulative GPA

Tick add GPA of prior semesters and enter your GPA so far with the credits it covers. The calculator combines the two properly, by weighting each side by its credits, rather than averaging two GPA figures together.

That distinction is where most hand calculations go wrong. A 3.9 over 60 credits and a 3.0 over 15 credits is not 3.45. It is (3.9 × 60 + 3.0 × 15) divided by 75, which is 3.72. The larger body of work dominates, and the more credits you accumulate the harder your GPA becomes to move in either direction.

Grouping courses into semesters

Tick group courses into semesters to keep terms separate. Each block gets its own GPA in the results table while the overall figure still spans everything, which is the view you want when you are checking whether this term pulled your average up or down.

Planning the GPA you need

The planning calculator answers the question students actually ask: what do I need from here? Give it your current GPA and credits, your target, and the credits you still have to take.

The formula rearranges the same weighted average:

needed = (target × (current credits + new credits) − current GPA × current credits) ÷ new credits

Starting from 3.663 over 8 credits and aiming for a 3.0 across 15 more credits, that is (3 × 23 − 3.663 × 8) divided by 15, which is 2.646. In this case you are above target already, so the answer is the floor you must not drop below rather than a bar to clear.

Run the same sum the other way and the arithmetic gets blunt. A 2.0 over 60 credits aiming for a 3.0 with 30 credits left needs a 5.0 across those credits, which no scale offers. That is not a reason to give up; it is a reason to check the target against the credits you have left before you build a plan on it.

Weighted and unweighted GPA

High schools often report two figures. An unweighted GPA treats every course alike and stops at 4.0. A weighted GPA adds points for harder courses, commonly half a point for honors and a full point for AP or IB, so an A in AP calculus counts 5.0 and the transcript can exceed 4.0.

To reproduce a weighted GPA here, add a row to the scale with the boosted points, or enter the boosted value directly in point value format. Colleges frequently recalculate anyway, stripping the weighting and sometimes counting only academic subjects, so the number on your transcript and the number an admissions office uses are often not the same.

Habits that actually move a GPA

No formula raises a GPA, but a few habits reliably help.

Turn up. Attendance is worth more than the notes suggest. Announcements about a changed exam location or a narrowed syllabus tend to be made out loud and never posted, questions from other students draw out material a reading will not, and in a small class a professor who recognises you is more inclined to be reasonable when something goes wrong.

Plan the term, not the week. Once you know the credits you are carrying, budget the hours before the work arrives. Overloading is the most common cause of a bad term, and it is visible in advance. Reviewing a little each week beats a night before an exam, because material reviewed several times over a month is retained at a fraction of the effort.

Spend your effort where the credits are. This is the part the arithmetic tells you. A 4 credit course counts twice as much as a 2 credit one, so an hour moved from the small course to the large one buys more GPA for the same work. Check the credit weighting before you decide what to drop.

Know the deadlines that are not academic. The withdrawal date is the most valuable one on the calendar. A W leaves your GPA untouched while an F sits in it permanently, and the two are separated by a date rather than by anything you do in the course.

Reading your result

Check total credits before the GPA. If the figure looks wrong, the usual reason is a blank credits box, since a course with no credits contributes nothing at all.

Treat the number as an estimate of what your institution will report. Rounding rules vary, some schools exclude repeated courses or count only the higher attempt, and transfer credits are frequently accepted without their grades, which means they add credits toward a degree while sitting outside the GPA entirely. For the weighted average inside a single course rather than across a transcript, use the Grade Calculator.