To understand the calculations behind your GPA, you first need to distinguish between weighted and unweighted GPA. An unweighted GPA is used most frequently by high schools and colleges across the US. It doesn’t take into account the difficulty of the courses you have taken and only represents the average grade – which at some point was recognized as a major GPA shortcoming. That’s why a weighted index was invented.
A weighted GPA does take into account additional efforts you invest to complete courses of increased difficulty, such as honors classes. The weighted GPA was invented to get a better, more comprehensive evaluation of a student’s abilities and academic ambition.
Colleges look at applicants’ weighted and unweighted GPAs to have a better understanding of their background. However, an unweighted GPA is used to compare your achievements to others, while a weighted one is an additional metric.
Manually (that is, without the use of our calc), the weighted and unweighted GPAs are calculated as follows.
To get an unweighted GPA, you have to convert the grade you have received for every class to date into a corresponding number. This is usually done on a 4.0-grade scale.
On this scale, “A” equals 4.0 GPA points, “A-“ equals 3.7 points, “B+” equals 3.3 points, “B” equals 3.0 GPA points and so on in the descending order.
After you have converted every grade, add them up and then divide by the total number of classes you have taken. There – you have your unweighted GPA!
To get a weighted GPA, you have to assign higher values for International Baccalaureate, Honors and Advanced Placement classes. Usually, a 5.0 scale is used to get the weighted value. The rest of the calculating procedure remains the same. Therefore, if you have succeeded in the classes of increased difficulty, your GPA may exceed 4.0 (which is far beyond the 3.5 GPA required by many colleges).
There is also a more sophisticated way to calculate your GPA with the number of credit hours assigned for each course (usually in college). To use this method, you will have to multiply the number you’ve received after converting a letter grade for each class by the number of credits assigned for such class, add them up and divide by the total number of credits for all classes.
In the meantime, using our GPA and letter grade calculator will save you all the trouble! To get the number, you will just have to:
The main benefits of this solution are – it’s fast, easy, and absolutely free!
If you want to know where you stand in terms of grades, you will have no other choice but to monitor your GPA (Grade Point Average) very closely. In the unlikely event that you have been living under a rock up until now, a GPA is an average of your grades received for all courses within a certain period of time (usually a semester).
GPA is calculated for college and high school, with the latter being of bigger importance since it will be taken into account when evaluating your chances of getting accepted to the college you are applying to.
Semester GPA calculation is made by your school every semester, and you will get the result after you’ve taken all the courses.
Besides applying to college, your GPA will be taken into account when evaluating your candidacy for:
In short, a GPA is probably one of the most important indices you should keep an eye on. Our GPA calculator is here to help you do that.
Even though a GPA is usually calculated for a semester, colleges also use the cumulative or
overall GPA (also called CGPA) This, in essence, is just the
average of all classes you have taken up to date within a term longer than a semester.
The instruction how to calculate your cumulative GPA with our calculator is
pretty much the same, the only difference being that you’ll have to enter ALL the classes, not
only ones you’ve taken in the current semester.
Evaluating your performance is useful, but a significant percentage of students prefer to use our online tool to predict their score. The algorithm of action doesn’t differ – you will still have to specify your grades and credit hours, but in this case also include the courses you are planning to take and the grades you are planning to receive. It will give you a pretty good idea of how bad you can afford to do in some classes and how well you’ll have to work in others.
Absolutely! There are no exceptions – whether you are a high school student, a graduate or already in college.
There are only a few schools that prefer to use proprietary GPA grading scales. In any case, the differences are negligible, so by using our calculator, you will get a very good approximation of your grade.
No! Our help is 100% free for all users.
Yes! We have checked and double-checked the calculation algorithms and they work like a clock.
As long as you need to specify your grades – the calculation is made instantly.
We believe
that a big part of getting a good GPA is keeping a close eye on its changes and taking measures
at an appropriate time. Our calculator will help you do just that!