GPA Calculator

How do I calculate my GPA?

Your GPA is a credit-weighted average of your grades, not a plain average. Each letter grade maps to points on the 4.0 scale, then you multiply by the credit hours so a heavier class counts for more. Add the results, which are your quality points, and divide by the total credits. An A worth 4.0 over 3 credits plus a B worth 3.0 over 4 credits gives 24 quality points across 7 credits, which is a 3.43 GPA. It runs that for every course you add, and it shows the credits and quality points so you'll see exactly where the number comes from.

Letter grade to GPA points

Here's the standard 4.0 scale the calculator uses. Weighting adds 0.5 for an honors course and 1.0 for an AP or IB course on top of these base points, so that's how a weighted GPA climbs past 4.0. If your school's scale differs, it's usually close to this one, and you'll still get the right shape.

What's the difference between a weighted and unweighted GPA?

An unweighted GPA treats every course the same and tops out at 4.0, so an A is 4.0 whether it's gym or AP Calculus. A weighted GPA rewards harder courses by adding a bonus before the average, so it can run above 4.0 toward a 5.0 scale when you take honors and AP classes. Same grades, two different numbers. This tool shows both: leave the toggle off for unweighted, or flip it on and mark each course Regular, Honors, or AP for the weighted version.

Here's one four-course term run both ways, using this calculator's rule of plus 0.5 for honors and plus 1.0 for an AP or IB course. Notice only the two harder classes change:

The unweighted GPA is 45.0 quality points over 13 credits, so 3.46. The weighted GPA adds the honors and AP bonus for 50.5 points, which is 3.88. Because that gap depends entirely on how many honors and AP courses you took, there's no fixed formula to convert one to the other. If you need the unweighted figure from a weighted one, the honest fix is to recompute from your real grades with the toggle off, which is exactly what the tool does.

GPA to percentage conversion

Schools that grade in percentages map onto the 4.0 scale through letter grades. Here's the common US conversion, so you can see what a given GPA means as a percentage and the other way around. A 3.5 GPA, for example, sits between a B+ and an A-, which is roughly an 88 to 90% average. Exact cutoffs vary by school, so check your own grading policy if a grade is on a boundary.

Need the percentage math itself? The percentage calculator handles it, and the grade calculator turns your assignment scores into a class percentage first.

What is a good GPA, and how do you raise one?

A good GPA depends on the goal, but a few benchmarks help. A 3.0 is solid and meets most baseline requirements, a 3.5 is strong and competitive for many programs, and a 3.7 or above is excellent. Plenty of selective schools and scholarships look for 3.5 and up, while a 2.0 is usually the minimum to stay in good academic standing. So "good" really means good enough for what's next, whether that's a major, a transfer, or a job.

Raising a GPA gets harder as the credits pile up, because each new course is a smaller slice of the whole. That's the key insight: a single A barely moves a cumulative GPA built on 90 credits, but it swings a 12-credit freshman GPA a lot. So the earlier you lift your grades, the more they count. Retaking a failed class, where your school allows the new grade to replace the old, is one of the fastest ways to recover. Otherwise it's steady A's going forward, and the final grade calculator shows what you'll need on an exam to hit a target, while the education hub has the rest of the grade tools.