GPA Calculator

Every letter grade maps to grade points: A = 4.0, A- = 3.7, B+ = 3.3, B = 3.0, down to F = 0.0. Multiply each course's points by its credit hours to get quality points, add them, and divide by the total credits: GPA = total quality points ÷ total credit hours An A (4.0) in a 4-credit class and a B (3.0) in a 2-credit class give (4.0×4 + 3.0×2) ÷ 6 = 3.67. Notice the denominator. It is 6, the sum of the credits, not 2, the number of courses. That distinction is the whole calculation, and it is also where almost every hand-computed GPA goes wrong.

Take the same two classes and average the letters instead: (4.0 + 3.0) ÷ 2 = 3.5. That is not your GPA. The correct answer is 3.67, because the A was earned in a course carrying twice the credit of the B. A GPA is a weighted average and the credits are the weights. Divide by the count of courses and you are asserting that a 1-credit lab and a 4-credit lecture contribute equally to your standing, which no registrar in the country believes. Two quick checks catch the error. First, the result must land between your lowest and highest grade points — no combination of a 4.0 and a 3.0 can produce anything below 3.0 or above 4.0, whatever the credits. Second, the GPA leans toward the heavier course. Here 3.67 sits closer to the 4.0, which is right, because that course carried more weight. If your number drifts toward the lighter course, the weights went in backwards. Leave the credits field blank and this calculator deliberately falls back to equal weighting — useful for a rough check, but not what your transcript will say.

This calculator produces an unweighted GPA on the standard 4.0 scale: an A is 4.0 whether it came from remedial algebra or AP Calculus. Many high schools also report a weighted GPA that adds a bump for course difficulty — commonly half a point for honors and a full point for AP or IB classes, which lets the scale run past 4.0 to a maximum of 4.5 or 5.0. The size of the bump, which courses qualify, and whether the weighted figure appears on the transcript at all are decided by the district or school. There is no national standard, which is precisely why a 4.3 from one school and a 4.3 from another are not comparable. The practical consequence: when an application, scholarship or athletic eligibility form asks for your GPA, find out which one it wants. Some institutions recalculate applicants' GPAs on their own internal scale regardless of what the transcript says. Whether yours does, and how, is a question for that admissions office — do not assume.

This is the same weighting trap one level up, and it catches people who got the per-course math right. Suppose you earned a 3.0 across 15 credits in the fall and a 4.0 across 6 credits in a light spring term. Averaging the two GPAs gives 3.5. Your actual cumulative GPA is (3.0×15 + 4.0×6) ÷ 21 = 69 ÷ 21 = 3.29. The gap is more than two tenths, and it exists because a GPA is already an average, so it carries no memory of how many credits produced it. Averaging averages silently promotes a 6-credit term to the same importance as a 15-credit one. The fix is to weight each term by its credits — or simply to enter every course from every term into this calculator at once, which comes to the same thing. The general rule is worth carrying beyond GPAs: when the groups are different sizes, the size is the weight. Averaging averages is only legitimate when every group is exactly the same size.

The 4.0 scale looks standardized and is not, once you look at the edges. A+: this calculator treats it as 4.0, the most common choice, but some institutions award 4.33 and let a GPA exceed 4.0 without any honors weighting at all. Plus and minus: not every school uses them, and some use minus grades but not plus. Pass/fail courses typically earn credit without entering the GPA calculation, which means a term of them leaves your GPA untouched in either direction. Repeated courses are the messiest case. Policies differ on whether a retake replaces the original grade, whether both attempts stay in the GPA, and how many retakes are permitted — and the answer can even differ between your institutional GPA and the one a graduate program computes from your transcript. Use this calculator to understand the mechanics and to project where you are heading. For a number that has to be official — a scholarship threshold, academic standing, a graduation requirement — the registrar's figure is the one that counts, and it is worth checking your own arithmetic against it once a year.