Cumulative GPA Calculator

How this is calculated

A GPA is a credit-weighted average of grade points. Each course converts its letter grade into points on your institution's scale, those points are multiplied by the course's credit hours to give quality points, and the GPA is all the quality points divided by all the credits they were earned in. It is not the plain average of your grades — that only matches when every course carries the same number of credits.

Worked through with the example the page loads with, on a plus/minus 4.0 scale. Calculus II, 4 credits at B+ (3.3), earns 13.2 quality points. Organic Chemistry, 4 credits at A− (3.7), earns 14.8. US History, 3 credits at A, earns 12. Spanish, 3 credits at B, earns 9. That is 49 quality points over 14 credits — a 3.50term. The 1-credit research seminar has no grade yet, so its credit isn't counted.

The record it lands on is 48 credits at 3.20, which is 153.6 quality points. Added together: 202.6 quality points over 62 credits, a cumulative 3.27. A half-grade-point term moved the cumulative by seven hundredths, because the 48 credits already banked outvote the 14 new ones. That ratio, not the term GPA, is what decides how much any term can move the number.

The one choice this tool can't make for you

What a letter is worth is set by your institution, and the scales genuinely differ. Maryland puts A+ and A both at 4.0. Penn State's undergraduate scale has no A+, no C−, and no D+ or D−. MIT computes on a 5.0 scale where an A is worth 5. A single A+ on a 4.3 scale rather than a 4.0 one is worth 0.3 extra grade points per credit, which is a visible difference across a transcript.

So the scale is a labelled input with three common readings, and the grade boxes also accept raw grade points — type 3.7 instead of A-— so a scale we don't list is still reachable without inventing a conversion for it. Your registrar publishes the one that counts.

What it assumes

• Credits are the weights. A 4-credit course counts four times as much as a 1-credit one, which is what makes a GPA different from an average of letters. Credit hours are used exactly as typed.
• A blank grade means in progress, not zero. Those credits are left out of both the term and the cumulative figure until a grade exists. An F, by contrast, is a real 0.0 that counts with full credit weight — which is why a failed course does more damage to a GPA than an unfinished one.
• Anything that isn't a letter on the scale is excluded. Pass/fail, withdrawals, incompletes and audits are dropped from the average and listed in the result, matching how registrars treat them.
• Your prior GPA and credits are taken as accurate. They enter the sum as one row weighted by those credits. If your transcript's cumulative GPA is rounded to two places, the carried figure inherits that rounding — a difference of a thousandth or two, never more.

Where this stops being right

• Repeated courses. Whether a retake replaces the original grade or both stay in the average is institutional policy, and it varies more than any other rule here. Maryland states plainly that “repeated courses will impact GPA calculations”; elsewhere the first attempt is excluded entirely. Check yours, then enter only the attempts your school counts.
• Transfer credits. These usually count toward your degree without entering the GPA of record at the receiving institution. If yours are in your transcript's credit total but not its GPA, don't include them here either.
• Major, term and degree GPAs. Institutions compute several GPAs from the same transcript over different subsets of courses. This calculates one average over the courses you give it — which subset that is, is your choice.
• Percentages. A GPA can't be computed from percentage grades without your school's letter cut-offs, and those differ by institution and sometimes by department. Convert to letters or grade points first — the weighted grade calculator works out the course percentage that a letter is then read off.
• This is not your official GPA. Your registrar computes the GPA of record. If your transcript disagrees with this page, it is right.

Sources

The arithmetic needs no authority. What does is the definition — that a GPA is quality points divided by credits attempted, and that each letter is worth a fixed number of points set by the institution. Both are published policy.

University of Maryland Office of the University Registrar, GPA Calculation: “Multiply the attempted credits of the course by the number of quality points assigned to the grade earned,” then “divide total quality points by total attempted credits.” The same page sets A+ and A at 4.0, A− at 3.7, B+ at 3.3 down to D− at 0.7 and F at 0.0, and states that “courses for which a mark of I, P, S, W, or NGR has been assigned are not included in computing the GPA.”

Penn State University Faculty Senate, Policy 47-60, Grade-Point Equivalents: A = 4.000, A− = 3.670, B+ = 3.330, B = 3.000, B− = 2.670, C+ = 2.330, C = 2.000, D = 1.000, F = 0.000 — a published scale with no A+, no C−, and no D+ or D−, which is why this tool asks which scale applies instead of assuming one.

MIT Office of the Registrar, Calculating GPA: “A=5, B=4, C=3, D=2, F=0” — total the units at each grade, multiply, “add the results and divide by the total number of units.” Same formula, a different scale entirely.

These are cited as published, verifiable examples rather than as policies governing your transcript — your own registrar states the equivalent rule, and it is the one that counts. What they establish between them is the point this tool is built on: the formula is fixed and the scale is not.

Last reviewed: August 2026