Grade Calculator
Calculate your final grade based on weighted assignments and exams.
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About
Grade Calculator
Three things sit above this. An editable grading scale, a grade calculator that takes your assignments and their weights and returns a weighted average, and a final grade calculator that tells you what you need on the last exam to land where you want.
Set your own scale first
Nothing on this page is fixed, because grading is not standard. At one university 80 is a B-, at another it is an A-, and at a third the whole scale stops at 4.0 with no A+ at all. Some departments run a 7 point scale where 93 and above is an A and there are no pluses or minuses.
Open the grading scale panel, change the letters, the points or the percentage bands, and everything below follows your version. There are three starting points built in: the common 4.3 scale, the same scale capped at 4.0, and a five band scale with no pluses or minuses. Your edits are kept in the browser, so the page still uses them next time.
Check your syllabus before trusting any default. A one band error at the boundary is the difference between a B+ and an A- on a transcript.
How a weighted grade works
Almost no course averages your scores straight. A final exam worth 40% counts eight times as much as a 5% homework, so an average that ignores the weights is meaningless.
The calculator converts each grade to points on your scale, multiplies each by its weight, adds those products, and divides by the total weight entered. Working through the default example:
| Assignment | Grade | Points | Weight | Points × weight |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Homework 1 | 90 | 3.7 | 5% | 18.5 |
| Project | B | 3.0 | 20% | 60 |
| Midterm exam | 88 | 3.3 | 20% | 66 |
| Total | 45% | 144.5 |
Dividing 144.5 by 45 gives 3.21, which sits closer to a B+ at 3.3 than to a B at 3.0, so the result reads B+ (3.21). Note the divisor: 45, not 100. Only graded work counts, which is what makes the number a fair picture of where you stand partway through a term rather than a score dragged down by assignments that do not exist yet.
You can type grades as percentages, as letters, or as a mix of both, exactly as in that table. Switch the weight format to points in Settings if your syllabus is written as raw points rather than percentages, and enter 50 for an assignment out of 50. The arithmetic is identical, since only the ratio between the weights matters.
Letter grades, points and percentages
| Letter grade | GPA points | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| A+ | 4.3 | 97-100% |
| A | 4 | 93-96% |
| A- | 3.7 | 90-92% |
| B+ | 3.3 | 87-89% |
| B | 3 | 83-86% |
| B- | 2.7 | 80-82% |
| C+ | 2.3 | 77-79% |
| C | 2 | 73-76% |
| C- | 1.7 | 70-72% |
| D+ | 1.3 | 67-69% |
| D | 1 | 63-66% |
| D- | 0.7 | 60-62% |
| F | 0 | 0-59% |
One thing worth knowing about any calculator that mixes percentages and letters, including this one: converting 90 to a letter throws information away. Both 90 and 92 become A- and both count as 3.7, so a course graded on percentages throughout will give a slightly different answer than the same course graded on points. If your syllabus works purely in percentages, put percentages in every row and read the average as points on your own scale.
Planning the rest of the term
The final grade planning box asks for a goal and the weight of everything still outstanding, and returns the grade you need across that remaining work.
The rule it uses is stricter than most people expect, and it is worth spelling out. To finish with an A, your final average does not need to reach 4.0. It needs to land closer to A than to A-, which means 3.85, the midpoint between them. The calculator solves for that boundary rather than for the letter's own points, so the answer is the lowest grade that genuinely secures the letter.
Worked through: with a 3.21 average over 45% of the course and an A goal on the remaining 55%, you would need 4.37 points across everything left. Nothing on the scale goes that high, so the honest answer is that an A is out of reach, and the calculator says so rather than quietly returning an impossible number. Raise that same student's project from a B to an A and the average becomes 3.66, the requirement drops to 4.01, and an A+ across the rest would do it.
That is the useful part of planning early. The arithmetic that looks impossible in week ten is often still open in week four, because the weight left to play with is larger.
What you need on the final
The second calculator answers the narrower question. Give it your current grade, the grade you want and the weight of the final, and it solves:
needed = (wanted − current × (1 − weight)) ÷ weight
With an 88 average, an 85 target and a final worth 40%, that is (85 − 88 × 0.6) ÷ 0.4, which is 80.5. You can drop 7.5 points below your current average and still finish where you want, because the 88 you have already banked carries 60% of the weight.
Two boundaries fall straight out of the same formula and are worth checking before you panic. The best possible outcome is your current grade on 60% plus 100 on the final, or 92.8. The worst is 52.8. Any target outside that range is settled already, one way or the other, and the calculator will tell you when the number it returns is above 100 or at or below zero.
A short history of grading
Grading has never been as standard as a transcript makes it look. In 1785 Yale ranked students as optimi, second optimi, inferiores and pejores. William and Mary sorted them into No. 1, students first in their class, and No. 2, those who were orderly, correct and attentive. Harvard graded on a numerical scale from 1 to 200, except in mathematics and philosophy where 1 to 100 was used, and shortly after 1883 switched to Classes I to V, with V the failing grade.
Letter grades close to the modern ones appear at Mount Holyoke College in 1887, using A, B, C, D and E, where E was the fail. That scale was harsher than anything common now, with a failing grade set at anything below 75%. The college later redefined it, adding F for failure, and the pattern spread through colleges and high schools from there.
What did not spread was agreement on the details. Whether an institution uses pluses and minuses, whether an A+ is worth more than an A, and where each band starts are all local decisions, which is exactly why the scale on this page is editable.
Weighted and unweighted GPA
A second kind of weighting shows up in high school. An unweighted GPA treats every course the same and tops out 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 scores 5.0 and a transcript can exceed 4.0.
This is a different operation from the weighting on this page, which is about how much each assignment counts inside one course. Both are called weighting and they are not the same thing. For a whole transcript, course by course with credit hours, use the GPA Calculator.
Reading your result
Check the total weight line first. If your syllabus adds to 100% and the total shows 45%, that is not an error, it means 55% has not been graded yet, and the average shown is for the work done so far.
Treat the letter as the school's rounding, not as a fact. If your average is 3.29 and the boundary is 3.3, whether that becomes a B+ depends on a policy written in the syllabus, not on the arithmetic. Some instructors round, some do not, some drop the lowest score before averaging, and a course that is curved is not being averaged at all in the way this calculator assumes.
To convert a raw score into a percentage before entering it, the Percent Calculator handles it, and for an unweighted mean across a set of scores the Average Calculator is the simpler tool.
Common questions
Frequently asked questions
Multiply each grade by its weight, add the results, then divide by the total weight. Three items worth 5%, 20% and 20% add to 45%, so the sum of the weighted points is divided by 45 rather than by 100.
Yes, that is what the grading scale panel is for. Edit the letters, the points and the percentage bands, and every calculator on the page follows. If your university treats 80 as an A+ rather than a B-, set it that way once and the change sticks in your browser.
The average is matched to the nearest grade point on your scale. 3.21 is 0.09 away from a B+ at 3.3 and 0.21 away from a B at 3.0, so B+ is the closer of the two.
Because a letter is a band, not a single value. To finish with an A rather than an A-, the final average has to land closer to A than to A-, which is 3.85 rather than 4.0. The planner solves for that midpoint so the answer really does secure the grade.
Subtract your current grade times the weight of everything before the final from your target, then divide by the weight of the final. With an 88 average, an 85 target and a final worth 40%, you need 80.5.
Yes. Each entry is converted to grade points on your scale before anything is averaged, so a row reading 90, a row reading B and a row reading 88 all work in the same calculation.
Switch the weight format to points in Settings and enter the raw values, such as 50 for an assignment out of 50. Only the ratio between the weights affects the result, so the average comes out the same either way.
No. A weighted grade is about how much each assignment counts inside one course. A weighted GPA adds points across a transcript for harder courses, usually half a point for honors and a full point for AP, which is why some high school GPAs go above 4.0.