Semester GPA from letter grades and credit hours on the standard 4.0 plus/minus scale — combined with your previous GPA for a running cumulative.
Most US colleges use this mapping from letter grades to grade points; percentage bands vary by professor, but the letter-to-point column is what the registrar actually computes with:
| Letter | Grade points | Typical % |
|---|---|---|
| A+ / A | 4.0 | 93–100% |
| A− | 3.7 | 90–92% |
| B+ | 3.3 | 87–89% |
| B | 3.0 | 83–86% |
| B− | 2.7 | 80–82% |
| C+ | 2.3 | 77–79% |
| C | 2.0 | 73–76% |
| C− | 1.7 | 70–72% |
| D+ | 1.3 | 67–69% |
| D | 1.0 | 63–66% |
| D− | 0.7 | 60–62% |
| F | 0.0 | below 60% |
Four courses: Calculus I (4 cr, A−), English Comp (3 cr, B+), Chemistry (4 cr, B), and a 1-credit lab (A). Quality points: 3.7×4 = 14.8; 3.3×3 = 9.9; 3.0×4 = 12.0; 4.0×1 = 4.0 — total 40.7 over 12 credits → semester GPA 3.39. Note how credits act as weights: the 4-credit B pulls the GPA down more than the 1-credit A pulls it up. If this student came in with a 3.42 across 45 credits, the new cumulative is (3.42×45 + 40.7) ÷ 57 = 3.41 — a solid term that barely moves the four-year number, which is exactly how cumulative GPA behaves as the credit base grows.
A few thresholds recur across US colleges: 2.0 is the usual good-academic-standing floor (below it: probation, and federal financial aid’s satisfactory-progress rules); 3.0 is a common cutoff for graduate program admissions and many employers’ résumé screens; 3.5 is the typical dean’s list line and where cum laude bands often begin (commonly 3.5 / 3.7 / 3.9 for the three Latin honors, though each school publishes its own). Scholarships frequently require maintaining 2.5–3.0 — worth checking before dropping a course, since withdrawing changes credits, not GPA.
High school GPAs are often weighted above 4.0 — an A in an AP or honors class can count 5.0, which is how 4.3 high school GPAs happen. College GPAs reset to the unweighted 4.0 scale, courses carry different credit hours, and pluses/minuses count — three reasons first-year students routinely see a lower number than they graduated high school with. For the general-purpose version that supports custom scales and course weights, use our GPA calculator; for a single course’s category math, the grade calculator handles syllabus weights.
Calculate college Grade Point Average with support for multiple courses, different grading systems, and credit hours.
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