How to calculate GPA

The method, in four steps

Every GPA calculation is these four steps, whatever the scale and whatever the school. The arithmetic never changes; only the table in step one does.

1. Turn each letter grade into grade points. On the standard 4.0 scale an A is 4.0, a B is 3.0, and the plus and minus variants sit at the third of a point between them. Your school's table is the one that counts — see the GPA scale for the full list.
2. Multiply each course's grade points by its credit hours.That product is the course's quality points. A four-credit course contributes four times what a one-credit course does, which is the entire reason a credit hour exists.
3. Add up the quality points, and add up the credit hours.Two totals, kept separate.
4. Divide the first by the second. Quality points over credit hours is your GPA.

A worked example

Five courses, three different credit values. The last column is step two: grade points times credit hours.

50.9 ÷ 15 = 3.393

Now the shortcut, on the same five grades: add the grade points, divide by five courses. That gives 17.3 ÷ 5 = 3.46 — higher by 0.067. The difference is the one-credit elective, which the shortcut treats as equal in weight to the four-credit lab. A gap of 0.067 is small enough to look like rounding and large enough to move a figure across a scholarship threshold, which is why it is worth being exact about.

The courses that count for nothing

A withdrawal, a pass on a pass/fail course, an incomplete and an audit earn no grade points — and they also remove their credit hours from the denominator. Both halves matter. Leaving the credits in while the points come out is the same as scoring the course zero, which is the single most common error in a hand-calculated GPA.

20.1 ÷ 6 = 3.35

The student was enrolled in 12 credits and graded on 6. The excluded rows show an em dash rather than a zero on purpose: a zero in that column would still add up, so the wrong method would survive your own check of the table.

An F is not in this group. A failing grade earns zero grade points and keeps its credit hours in the denominator, which is why one F does more damage than a withdrawal from the same course. If your school offers a late-withdrawal deadline, that is the arithmetic behind the advice to use it.

Weighted and unweighted

A weighted GPA adds bonus points to harder courses before the average is taken. It is not a scaled version of the unweighted number, and no factor converts one into the other — the bonus applies per course, so two students with identical letter grades get different weighted GPAs if they took different numbers of honors classes.

The most common policy adds 0.5 for an honors course and 1.0 for an AP or IB course, which puts the ceiling at 5.0 rather than 4.0. Here is one schedule under both methods.

3.6 unweighted, 4.1 weighted. Notice that no letter grade changed and no total was rescaled: the AP courses moved by 1.0 each and the honors course by 0.5, and the average followed. Notice too that a weighted figure above 4.0 does not mean straight A's — this student earned two B's.

Semester, cumulative, and the same trap again

A semester GPA covers one term's courses. A cumulative GPA covers every course on the transcript — and it is not the average of your semester GPAs, for exactly the reason the shortcut failed above. Terms carry different credit loads, so each term's GPA has to be weighted by the credits it was earned over.

In practice you have two equivalent routes: add up the quality points and credits from every course you have ever taken, or multiply each term's GPA by that term's credits and total those. Both give the same answer. Averaging the term GPAs gives a third number, and it is the wrong one. The cumulative calculator does the credit-weighted version.

Rounding, and what your school actually does

Three things on this page are conventions rather than facts, and your school's version of each is the one that counts.

• Whether an A+ is 4.0 or 4.3. Most United States schools cap it at 4.0, so an A and an A+ are recorded identically. A minority award 4.3.
• Where the percentage cutoffs sit. A 90 is an A− at many schools and a B+ at some. The letter is what enters a GPA, so the cutoff table decides the answer before the arithmetic starts.
• How the final figure is rounded. Two decimal places is usual, but some registrars truncate rather than round — the difference between 3.499 becoming 3.50 and becoming 3.49.

None of this changes the four steps. It changes the table you look the letters up in, which is why every calculator here asks you to pick a scale instead of assuming one.

Questions

Can I just average my grade points?

Only if every course carries the same number of credits. The worked example on this page comes to 3.393 when the credit hours are counted and 3.46 when they are ignored — the shortcut reads higher by 0.067, because the courses it flatters are the small ones. On a transcript with labs and one-credit electives the gap is usually larger than this.

What is a quality point?

A course's grade points multiplied by its credit hours. It is the numerator of the whole calculation: add up the quality points, divide by the credit hours those courses carried, and the result is the GPA. The example term here earns 50.9 quality points over 15 credits.

Does a withdrawal count as a zero?

No. A W, a P, an incomplete and an audit are removed from the numerator and the denominator both. The second example is enrolled in 12 credits and graded on 6, giving 3.35. Scoring those two courses as failing grades instead would report 1.675 — understating the term by 1.675.

Which GPA do colleges look at, weighted or unweighted?

Both, and they recalculate. Most admissions offices reweight your transcript on their own scale precisely because a weighted GPA means something different at every school. Report the figure your transcript shows, and know your unweighted number as well.

How many decimal places should I report?

Two is the convention on a transcript. This site computes to three so that you can see where a figure sits inside its rounding — 3.393 rounds to a different second decimal than a number a hundredth below it, and a scholarship cutoff at 3.4 is decided in exactly that space.

Do it with a calculator

Every calculator below shows its working, so you can check it against the method on this page rather than taking the number on trust.