Academic Standing Calculator
Put in your GPA and your credits, attempted and completed. You get all three of the tests your school runs before it renews your financial aid, each one either met or not — and, for the one most people fail, exactly how many credits it takes to fix.
Every threshold is yours to set, because none of them is set nationally.
Your record, and the lines your school draws
The left-hand numbers are on your transcript or student portal. The thresholds on the right are your school's, not the government's — they're prefilled with common ones, and your financial aid office publishes the real ones.
Where you stand on each test
Your completion rate is below the line. Failing any one of the three is enough on its own to put your aid at risk, however good the other two look.
| Test | Where you are | What's required | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Grades — cumulative GPA | 2.85 | 2.00 minimum | Meets it |
| Completion rate — credits passed ÷ attempted | 62.5% | 67% minimum | Below it |
| Maximum timeframe — credits attempted | 72 | 180 maximum | Within it |
You've passed 45 of 72 attempted credits, which is 62.5% against the 67% required. Next term you have to complete 12 of those 12 credits, which leaves room for no withdrawal and no failure at all. Passing every one of them reaches 67.86%.
These three tests are run together, not scored together. There is no averaging between them and no credit for clearing two: a school checks each one and a student who misses any of them is not making satisfactory progress.
Informational only — not financial aid advice, and not a determination. Your financial aid office decides your SAP status under a policy it publishes, using its own record of your attempted and completed credits, which may not match what you type here — transfer credits, repeated courses, remedial coursework, incompletes and grade changes are all counted differently from school to school. Every threshold on this page is an input because none of them is set nationally. If you are close to any of these lines, or already past one, the person to talk to is a financial aid counselor, and there is almost always a written appeal process. Nothing you type here leaves your browser.
How this is calculated
To keep federal student aid you have to be making Satisfactory Academic Progress, and every school that hands out that aid is required to have a written SAP policy containing three standards: one about your grades, one about how much of what you start you actually finish, and one about how long you are taking. The federal regulation says the policy must exist and sets an outer limit on the third. It does not set the numbers in the first two — your school does, and schools differ. That is why every threshold on this page is a box you can type in.
Completion rate= credits completed ÷ credits attempted
Credits to pass next term= rate × (attempted + next term) − completed
Credits to get back over the line= (rate × attempted − completed) ÷ (1 − rate)
Credit cap= credits the degree requires × maximum %
The worked example this page loads with
A student with a 2.85 cumulative GPA, 72 credits attempted and 45 completed, on a 120-credit degree. Test one passes easily — 2.85 clears a 2.00 minimum with 0.85 to spare. Test three passes too: 150% of 120 credits is a cap of 180 attempted, of which 72 are spent, leaving 108 against the 75 credits still needed to graduate. Test two is the one that fails. 45 ÷ 72 is 62.5%, and the requirement is 67%.
What it takes to fix is the useful part. Next term's 12 credits have to bring the cumulative rate to 67%, which needs 0.67 × 84 = 56.28 credits completed in total — 11.28 more than the 45 already there. Credits are whole things, so that rounds up: all 12, with no withdrawal and no failure. Passing 11 of the 12 leaves 56 of 84, which is exactly two thirds — 66.67%. That clears a policy written as 66.67% and misses one written as 67%. The student's aid turns on how their school chose to round, which is the best argument we can make for why this page asks you for the number instead of assuming it.
Where the 67% comes from
It is not in the regulation. It is arithmetic that falls out of the one number that is: if aid stops at 150% of a program's published length, then a student completing less than 100 ÷ 150 — 66.67% — of what they attempt cannot reach the end of the degree before the cap stops them. Rounding that floor to 67% is the common institutional choice, not a federal one, and some schools set the bar higher. Maryland asks for 75% once you are past 30 credits and 50% before that.
Why the three tests don't average
A GPA is a weighted average and invites you to think in trade-offs — a bad grade here offset by a good one there. SAP is not like that. The three standards are checked separately and a student who misses any one of them is not making satisfactory progress, however far clear of the other two they are. This page therefore prints three verdicts rather than a score, and the plain sentence above them names the failing test rather than netting it against the passes.
The tests also fail in different ways. Grades and completion rate can be recovered by doing well. The credit cap cannot: it counts credits attempted, so every further term spends more of it whatever the grades, and the only way through is usually an appeal.
What it assumes
- The thresholds are your school's. They arrive prefilled with common values so the page shows a real answer before you type, but 2.00 / 67% / 150% is a convention, not a rule. Your financial aid office publishes the real three, and substituting them is the single most important thing you can do on this page.
- Attempted and completed mean what your aid office says they mean. Withdrawals and incompletes are normally attempted but not completed. Transfer credits accepted toward your degree usually count as both. A repeated course counts as attempted every time you take it. Remedial coursework has its own rules. The numbers to type are the ones in your school's SAP policy, which are not always the ones on the front of your transcript.
- Your cumulative GPA is your school's figure. It is entered directly rather than recomputed here, and it may count repeated courses differently from the way the completion-rate test counts them.
- This is a snapshot, and SAP is checked at fixed points. 34 CFR 668.34(a)(3) requires an evaluation at the end of each payment period for programs of a year or less, and at least annually for longer ones. Your standing between reviews changes nothing until the next one runs.
Where this stops being right
- Some schools measure pace the other way. 34 CFR 668.34(a)(5)(ii) allows an institution to calculate pace either by dividing cumulative completed hours by cumulative attempted hours — what this page does — or by “determining the number of hours that the student should have completed by the evaluation point in order to complete the program within the maximum timeframe.” If your school uses the second method, the ratio here is still informative but it is not the figure your school will compute.
- The status ladder isn't arithmetic. Failing SAP does not immediately end aid. A school may assign financial aid warning for one payment period with no appeal required, and probation with an academic plan after a successful appeal. Which rung you land on is policy and judgment, not a calculation, and this page does not attempt it.
- Graduate, professional and certificate programs differ. The defaults here are undergraduate. Graduate programs commonly require a 3.0, and the maximum-timeframe rule is written differently for programs measured in clock hours rather than credits.
- State and institutional aid have their own standards. A scholarship, a state grant and a federal Pell Grant can each carry a different academic condition, often stricter than SAP. Clearing all three tests here does not mean every award you hold is safe.
- This is not a determination. Your financial aid office decides your status from its own record. If this page and a letter from them disagree, the letter is right.
Sources
The arithmetic needs no authority — it is a ratio and a rearrangement of one. What needs citing is the claim the whole page rests on: that these three tests exist because federal rules require them, and that the numbers inside them are set by individual schools rather than nationally.
U.S. Department of Education, 34 CFR § 668.34, Satisfactory academic progress. The three standards, in the regulation's own words. Grades, at (a)(4)(ii): for a program longer than two academic years, “at the end of the second academic year, the student must have a GPA of at least a ‘C’ or its equivalent, or have academic standing consistent with the institution's requirements for graduation.” Pace, at (a)(5)(ii): the rate “at which a student must progress through his or her educational program to ensure that the student will complete the program within the maximum timeframe, calculated by either dividing the cumulative number of hours the student has successfully completed by the cumulative number of hours the student has attempted” or by the should-have-completed method. Maximum timeframe, at (b)(1): for an undergraduate credit-hour program, “a period that is no longer than 150 percent of the published length of the educational program.” Note what is absent — no minimum completion percentage appears anywhere in the section.
The Ohio State University Office of Student Financial Aid, Satisfactory Academic Progress policy: a 2.00 cumulative GPA for undergraduates “by end of second academic year and beyond”; “all undergraduate and graduate students are expected to complete at least 67 percent of the credit hours attempted”; and a maximum timeframe of “150% of required hours to complete degree.” This is the common reading of the regulation, and where this page's defaults come from.
University of Maryland Office of Student Financial Aid, Satisfactory Academic Progress: the same 2.0 GPA, but “undergraduate students with more than 30 UMD and transfer credits must complete at least 75% of the total number of credits attempted,” with 50% for freshmen below 30 credits, and a flat cap — “the maximum number of cumulative credits undergraduate students can attempt is 180, including transfer credits” — rather than a percentage of the degree. Also stated plainly: “any repeated course will be counted as credits attempted but not as credits earned.” Cited as the counter-example. Two large public universities, one federal rule, and a completion standard eight points apart.
These are published, verifiable examples of how institutions set their thresholds, not policies governing your aid. Your own school states the equivalent three, and those are the ones that count.
Last reviewed: August 2026
Frequently asked questions
Why did I lose my financial aid when my GPA is fine?
Almost always the completion rate, which is the test students never see coming. Satisfactory Academic Progress is three separate checks, and a GPA is only the first of them. The second divides the credits you have completed by the credits you have attempted, and a course you withdrew from counts as attempted but not completed — so it never touches your GPA and lands with full weight here. The example this page loads with is exactly that student: a 2.85 GPA, comfortably above the 2.00 minimum, and 45 completed credits out of 72 attempted, which is 62.5% against a 67% requirement. Two tests pass, one fails, and failing any one of the three is enough.
What is the 67% rule, and is it federal?
The requirement to have a completion-rate standard is federal; the number 67% is not. Federal rules cap financial aid at 150% of a program's published length, and a student completing less than two thirds of what they attempt mathematically cannot finish inside that cap — 100 divided by 150 is 66.67%. Most schools round that floor to 67% and publish it as their standard, which is why the figure is everywhere. It is still a school's choice: the University of Maryland requires 75% of attempted credits from students past 30 credits, and 50% from freshmen. Type in what your own financial aid office publishes, because 62.5% passes at one of those schools and fails at the other two.
Do withdrawals count against financial aid?
Yes, and they cost you twice. A W is a credit attempted and not completed, so it pushes the numerator and denominator of your completion rate apart — one withdrawal from a 3-credit course moves a 45-of-72 record to 45 of 75, dropping the rate from 62.5% to 60%. It also spends part of your maximum-timeframe allowance, because that cap counts credits attempted rather than credits earned. Neither effect shows up in a GPA, which is why a transcript can look healthy right until the financial aid office runs its review. Incompletes usually count the same way until the grade is finalized.
Can I appeal losing financial aid for academic progress?
Nearly always, and federal rules explicitly contemplate it. 34 CFR 668.34 lets a school place a student who fails SAP on financial aid warning for one payment period without any appeal at all, with aid continuing throughout it. Beyond that, a student may appeal on grounds such as the death of a relative, their own injury or illness, or other special circumstances, and must explain what caused the failure and what has changed. A successful appeal typically comes with an academic plan, agreed with an advisor, that puts you back in compliance by a set point. The maximum-timeframe test is the one schools most often extend this way. This is a written process with deadlines — a financial aid counselor is the person to start it with.
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