GPA Calculator

Background.

A B in a four-credit chemistry course adds more to a grade point average than a B+ in a three-credit history course: 3.0 × 4 = 12 quality points against 3.3 × 3 = 9.9. That is the part of GPA arithmetic most people skip when they estimate in their heads. A grade point average is not the average of your letter grades; it is the average of their point values weighted by credit hours, so heavy courses pull harder in both directions, and a single poor grade in a four- or five-credit course can cost more than two in one-credit seminars.

Each course goes in as a letter grade and a number of credits. The letter becomes points on the US 4.0 scale used by a great many American colleges — A = 4.0, A− = 3.7, B+ = 3.3, B = 3.0, down to F = 0 — the points are multiplied by the credits, and the total is divided by the credits entered. You get the GPA to two decimal places, the total credits, and the total grade points, which transcripts often call quality points. Feed in one semester's courses for a term GPA, or every graded course on the transcript for a cumulative one; the arithmetic is identical.

What goes into that list decides whether the answer matches your transcript. Withdrawals, incompletes, audits and pass/fail courses normally carry no grade points and are left out, while a failed course stays in, adding credits to the denominator and nothing to the numerator. Schools also differ in small ways: some use 3.67 and 3.33 rather than 3.7 and 3.3, some award 4.3 for an A+, and some drop a repeated course's first grade. When a figure needs to agree with an official record to the second decimal, the registrar's own rules are the ones that count.

What is gpa calculator?

Grade point average is the credit-weighted mean of the grade points earned in a set of courses. Each course contributes its grade-point value multiplied by its credit hours, known as quality points or grade points; the sum of those is divided by the total credit hours attempted. On the plus/minus 4.0 scale each full letter is a whole point apart, a minus subtracts 0.3 and a plus adds 0.3, so the steps run 4.0, 3.7, 3.3, 3.0, 2.7 and so on down to 0.7 for a D− and 0 for an F. A term GPA covers one semester or quarter; a cumulative GPA covers every graded course taken at the institution. Because credits are the weights, the share of a term GPA a course controls is its credits divided by the term's total: in a 17-credit term, a 4-credit course carries 23.5% of the result and a 3-credit course 17.6%. The thresholds that hang on GPA, such as dean's list, Latin honors, scholarship renewal and academic probation, are set by each institution, so the same 3.5 can clear one school's bar and miss another's. The scale here is unweighted, so an A is worth 4.0 whether or not the course was honors or Advanced Placement.

How to use this calculator.

1. 01Gather each course's letter grade and credit hours from your transcript or student portal, where credits may be called units or semester hours. A typical lecture course carries 3 or 4 credits and a separate lab often 1.
2. 02Type the courses as a list in square brackets, one pair per course, for example [{"grade":"A-","credits":3},{"grade":"B+","credits":4}]. Grades must be capital letters with an ordinary hyphen for a minus.
3. 03Use only A, A-, B+, B, B-, C+, C, C-, D+, D, D- or F. There is no A+; if your school counts an A+ as 4.0, enter it as A.
4. 04Leave out W, I, P/NC, S/U and audited courses, which carry no grade points. Keep any F, which counts its credits with zero points.
5. 05To project a future GPA, add the courses you are taking with the grades you expect, then compare the result with the figure from completed courses alone.
6. 06Read the GPA, then the total credits and grade points; if your transcript differs, check the scale your school uses and how it treats repeats and transfer credit.

The formula.

GPA = Σ(gradeᵢ × creditsᵢ) ÷ Σcreditsᵢ, where gradeᵢ is the grade-point value of course i and creditsᵢ its credit hours. The values are A 4.0, A− 3.7, B+ 3.3, B 3.0, B− 2.7, C+ 2.3, C 2.0, C− 1.7, D+ 1.3, D 1.0, D− 0.7 and F 0. The numerator is reported as total grade points and the denominator as total credits; the GPA is that ratio rounded to two decimal places, while the two totals are reported unrounded. Fractional credits, such as a 1.5-credit lab, are accepted.

The denominator is credits attempted, not credits passed, which is why an F hurts so much. A student averaging 3.5 over 14 credits who fails a 3-credit course falls to 3.5 × 14 ÷ 17 = 2.88. The same weighting means a grade's damage scales with its course's size: the gap between a B and a C costs 1.0 point per credit, so 4 quality points in a 4-credit course and 1 in a 1-credit lab.

The same rule governs combining terms. Two term GPAs cannot simply be averaged unless the terms carried equal credits: a 3.29 over 17 credits and a 3.80 over 13 combine as (55.9 + 49.4) ÷ 30 = 3.51, not the 3.545 a plain average of the two gives. Adding grade points and credits, then dividing, is always safe.

Because GPA is an average, its sensitivity falls as credits accumulate. Every new course is weighed against everything already counted, so the same strong semester moves a short record a long way and a long record only a little. That is also what makes a target GPA reachable or not: with a current GPA of G over n credits and m credits still to come, reaching a target T needs (T × (n + m) − G × n) ÷ m on the remaining work, and an answer above 4.0 means the target cannot be met on this scale.

Outside the formula sit the policy questions each registrar settles: whether plus and minus grades are used, whether an A+ is worth 4.0 or 4.3, how repeated courses count, and whether the final figure is rounded or truncated.

A worked example.

Frequently asked questions.

References& sources.

1. [1]MIT Registrar's Office — Explanation of Grades. Official grade-point values on the 4.0 scale, including the +/- mapping, and the exclusion rules for P/DR/OX grades from GPA calculation.
2. [2]Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) Registrar — Grading System. Authoritative reference for letter-grade-to-grade-point conversion at Harvard and treatment of SAT/UNS grades.
3. [3]College Board — Calculating Your GPA. Plain-language explanation of weighted versus unweighted GPA and the absence of a national standard for the weighting bump assigned to honors/AP/IB courses.
4. [4]National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) — State of College Admission. Annual survey documenting the weight admissions readers place on overall high school GPA and grades in college-prep courses, and the practice of recalculating submitted GPAs to a common scale.
5. [5]U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences — National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). Aggregate data on U.S. high school GPA distributions and trends in grading over time.
6. [6]World Education Services (WES) — Grade Conversion Guide. Widely cited reference for converting international grading systems (UK, German, Indian, French, etc.) to the U.S. 4.0 letter-grade scale prior to GPA calculation.