Test Grade Calculator

How this is calculated

The score itself is one division. What the letter costs is the same division run backwards and rounded up, because marks are whole things — you cannot get 46.5 questions right, so a cut-off that lands between two questions costs the higher one.

Worked through with the example the page loads with. A 50-question test with 4 wrong leaves 46 right, and 46 ÷ 50 × 100 = 92%. On the plus/minus scale that's an A−: the A starts at 93%, which costs 50 × 93 ÷ 100 = 46.5, rounded up to 47 right. One more correct answer would have changed the letter. On the whole-letter scale, where the A starts at 90%, the same test is already an A — which is the reason this page makes you look at the cut-offs.

Questions or points — the same calculation

Nothing here assumes whole questions. A test marked out of 50 points where you lost 3.5 to partial credit is entered as 50 and 3.5, and comes out at 93%. Enter whichever unit your test was actually marked in; mixing them — 50 questions, 3 points lost — is the one way to get a wrong answer out of this page.

What it assumes

• Every question is worth the same. That is what a question count means. If some questions are worth more, the test is marked in points, so enter the points — total possible and points lost.
• A cut-off includes its own number. A cut-off of 90 means 90.0 earns that letter and 89.99 does not. Some instructors round 89.5 up first; that rounding is their rule, not arithmetic, and it isn't applied here.
• The cut-offs you type are the ones that count. The two scales offered are common conventions, not standards, and they disagree about a 92%. The tool prints what the other one would have said whenever the letter differs.
• Nothing is capped. A negative number wrong — extra credit added back — takes the score above 100, and more wrong than there are questions takes it below zero. Both are shown as they are rather than clamped into range.

Where this stops being right

• Curves and adjustments. A curve, a thrown-out question, a replacement policy for a bad test — all are your instructor's rules applied after the marking. Enter the curved mark, or drop the thrown-out question from the question count.
• One test is not a course grade. This scores a single assessment. What it does to your course grade depends on the weight your syllabus gives it — the weighted grade calculator does that roll-up, and the final grade calculator works out what the tests still ahead of you have to earn.
• A letter is not a GPA. What an A− is worth in grade points is a second institutional decision, separate from where the A− starts. The cumulative GPA calculator handles that conversion, and it too asks which scale you're on.
• This is not your official grade. Your instructor records it and your registrar keeps it. If either disagrees with this page, they are right.

Sources

Dividing right answers by total answers needs no authority. The claim that does need one is the reason the cut-offs on this page are an input rather than a constant: published institutional scales disagree with each other, and many institutions don't publish percentage cut-offs at all.

Columbia University School of Professional Studies, Grades: a published percentage scale in which A = 93–97.9%, A− = 90–92.9%, B+ = 87–89.9%, and D = 60–69.9% — a plus/minus scale with no D+ or D−.

Pace University, Grading System (undergraduate catalog): bands the same letters differently — A and A− together span 90–100%, C−, D+ and D all sit in 60–69% — and states plainly that “these equivalents are shown only as guidelines for faculty.”

University of Missouri Office of the University Registrar, Grading System: publishes what each letter is worth in grade points (A− = 3.7, B+ = 3.3) and no percentage equivalents whatsoever. The percentage at which an A− begins is simply not an institution-level fact there — it lives in the syllabus.

Those three are cited as verifiable examples, not as rules governing your course. The point they establish together is the one this tool is built on: there is no universal answer to “what letter is a 92%”, so the honest calculator asks you for the cut-offs and shows its work against them.

Last reviewed: August 2026