College GPA Calculator

Your GPA is the single most important number in your college application. Our calculator gives you two scores — unweighted and weighted — because admissions offices look at both.

Unweighted GPA uses the standard 4.0 scale where A = 4.0, B = 3.0, C = 2.0, D = 1.0, and F = 0.0. Every class counts the same regardless of difficulty. Weighted GPA adds bonus points for advanced coursework: Honors courses get +0.5 and AP/IB courses get +1.0, reflecting the extra rigor on a 5.0 scale.

After calculating your GPA, we compare it against admission profiles at 50 top universities using IPEDS and Common Data Set reports. The School Match section shows where your GPA puts you — Reach, Match, or Safety — based on each school's selectivity tier and historical admit data.

Weighted vs. Unweighted GPA: What's the Difference?

Unweighted GPA uses a 4.0 scale where an A is worth 4.0 in every class — a regular English course and an AP Physics course count the same. Weighted GPA adds extra points for harder classes: most high schools add 0.5 for Honors and 1.0 for AP or IB, so a weighted GPA can rise above 4.0 (often up to 5.0). The difference between weighted and unweighted GPA is simply whether course difficulty is rewarded. This college GPA calculator shows both so you can see each number the way an admissions office will.

Do Colleges Look at Weighted or Unweighted GPA?

Most colleges look at both, but they rarely trust your school's weighted GPA at face value. Because every high school weights differently, many admissions offices recalculate your GPA on their own scale — usually unweighting everything to a clean 4.0, dropping non-academic classes like gym, and then re-applying their own weighting for AP/IB. The University of California, for example, caps how many honors points it will count. The practical takeaway: a strong unweighted GPA plus a demanding course load beats a sky-high weighted GPA built on easy classes.

How Do Colleges Calculate GPA? (Quality Points)

Colleges calculate GPA with quality points: each grade is converted to points (A = 4.0, B = 3.0, and so on), multiplied by the course's credit hours, then totaled and divided by total credits. A 4-credit A (16 quality points) moves your average more than a 1-credit A. That is exactly how this calculator works — enter each course's grade and credits and it returns the weighted average, not a simple grade average.

What Is a Good College GPA?

A 3.0 unweighted GPA is roughly the national average and keeps most state universities in reach. A 3.5+ is competitive at selective schools, and the most selective colleges — Ivy League and equivalents — admit students who cluster near a 3.9–4.0 unweighted. Use the School Match section above to see, with federal data, which colleges accept students at your GPA instead of guessing.

Cumulative GPA Across Multiple Semesters or Colleges

Your cumulative GPA combines every graded course you've taken. To calculate a cumulative GPA across semesters, add all quality points and divide by all attempted credits — averaging two semester GPAs only works if both carry the same credits. If you're transferring, note that each college recalculates a transfer GPA from your original transcript rather than importing the number your previous school reported. Enter every course below to get one accurate cumulative figure.