How to Calculate Your GPA by Hand (In About Two Minutes)

How do you calculate your GPA?

Multiply each course's grade points by its credit hours, add those results together, then divide by the total credit hours. The division by credit hours is the step people skip, and it is the step that makes a GPA weighted rather than a simple average.

Step 1: turn letter grades into grade points

Most US schools use a four point scale:

• A = 4.0, A minus = 3.7
• B plus = 3.3, B = 3.0, B minus = 2.7
• C plus = 2.3, C = 2.0, C minus = 1.7
• D plus = 1.3, D = 1.0
• F = 0.0

Some schools do not use plus and minus at all, and a few use a different top value. Check your registrar's page once, because using the wrong scale makes every calculation after it wrong.

Step 2: multiply by credit hours

A three credit course counts three times as much as a one credit course. That is the whole reason the calculation is not a plain average.

For each course, multiply grade points by credit hours. This gives you quality points, which is the registrar's term for the same thing.

Step 3: divide and you are done

Add up all the quality points, add up all the credit hours, and divide the first by the second.

A worked example

Say your semester looks like this:

• Biology, 4 credits, B plus (3.3) gives 13.2 quality points
• Statistics, 3 credits, A minus (3.7) gives 11.1 quality points
• English, 3 credits, B (3.0) gives 9.0 quality points
• Public Speaking, 2 credits, A (4.0) gives 8.0 quality points

Quality points total 41.3. Credit hours total 12. Divide 41.3 by 12 and your semester GPA is 3.44.

Notice what the weighting did. The A in Public Speaking felt great but it was only two credits, so it moved the average less than the B plus in four credit Biology. If you want to raise a GPA, the high credit courses are where the leverage is.

How to calculate a cumulative GPA

Same method, more rows. Add every course you have ever taken, not just this semester. Do not average your semester GPAs together, because semesters with different credit loads are not equal and averaging them gives the wrong answer.

If you have 58 quality points from 18 credits last year and 41.3 from 12 credits this semester, your cumulative is 99.3 divided by 30, which is 3.31.

The parts people get wrong

Averaging semester GPAs. Covered above, and it is the single most common mistake.

Counting pass or fail courses. These usually carry credit hours but no grade points, so they are excluded from the calculation entirely. Including them drags your number down artificially.

Assuming retakes replace the original. Some schools replace the old grade, some average both, some keep both on the transcript but count one. This varies more than any other rule, so check.

Forgetting transfer credits. Many schools grant the credit but exclude the grade from your GPA.

A faster way

The maths is not hard but doing it repeatedly during a semester is tedious, and doing it wrong is worse than not doing it. Our free GPA calculator handles the weighting for you, and College Life keeps a running GPA as you enter grades so you can see the effect of a single course before finals rather than after.

Either way, the number worth knowing is not just your GPA. It is which course is costing you the most, which the worked example above shows you how to find.