Grade Tools
Calculate your unweighted GPA from your course grades, or convert a weighted GPA you already have. Both work on the standard 4.0 scale, free and with no account.
Enter how many of each grade you have earned across all your courses, freshman year to now.
Course level does not matter here. An A in AP Biology and an A in regular Biology are both 4.0 unweighted.
Total courses means every graded class on your transcript so far, not just this year.
Unweighted GPA is a plain average. Every course counts the same, no matter how hard it is, and the scale tops out at 4.0.
Three steps:
Say you have taken eight courses and earned five A's, two B+'s, and one B. That is (5 × 4.0) + (2 × 3.3) + (1 × 3.0), which comes to 29.6. Divide by 8 and your unweighted GPA is 3.70.
Notice what does not appear anywhere in that calculation: course difficulty. An A in AP Calculus and an A in regular Algebra II are both worth exactly 4.0. That is the entire difference between unweighted and weighted, and it is why an unweighted GPA can never exceed 4.0.
If you only need to convert a single grade rather than a full GPA, this is the standard mapping most American high schools use.
| Letter | GPA | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| 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% |
| F | 0.0 | Below 63% |
An unweighted GPA puts every course on the same 4.0 scale. An A is a 4.0 whether you earned it in regular English or AP Physics. It caps at 4.0, always.
A weighted GPA adds points for harder courses. Most schools add a full point for AP and IB and half a point for honors, so an A in AP Chemistry counts as a 5.0. This is why weighted GPAs run above 4.0, and why a 4.3 means very different things at two different high schools.
Weighting is set by each high school with no national standard. One school weights AP a full point, another weights it half, a third weights nothing at all. A 4.4 from the first school and a 3.9 from the third can represent identical work.
Admissions offices know this, so most recalculate. They typically strip the weighting, sometimes drop non-academic courses like PE and health, and rebuild the GPA on their own scale. Then they read that number next to your transcript to see how demanding your schedule was.
Which means the useful question is not whether your GPA looks high. It is whether you performed well in the most demanding courses your school actually offered you.
Convert each grade to points on the 4.0 scale, add them up, and divide by the number of courses. Course difficulty plays no part, which is what makes it unweighted. The calculator above does this if you enter how many of each grade you have.
A 4.1 is weighted, since unweighted stops at 4.0. Behind it is an unweighted figure somewhere around 3.7 to 4.0, and the more AP, IB, and honors courses that produced the 4.1, the lower that number will be. Use the second tab above to estimate it.
Yes, it is strong and competitive at most colleges. Rigor is the other half of the picture: a 3.7 earned across AP and honors courses generally reads better than a 4.0 earned in the least demanding schedule available.
No. Unweighted caps at 4.0 by definition, because an A is worth exactly 4.0 no matter the course. Anything above 4.0 is a weighted GPA.
Neither, really. Most recalculate using their own formula so they can compare applicants from thousands of different high schools on one scale. Report what your school reports and let them do their conversion.
Usually not. Admissions offices look at course rigor directly, and a transcript that avoids available advanced courses is visible to them. A B in AP is generally read more favorably than an A in the regular section of the same subject, though this stops being true if the harder schedule causes grades to drop across the board.
Use every graded course completed so far, including freshman year. Colleges see your full high school record, not just your current year, so a running cumulative GPA is the number that matters.
The College Guide portal calculates GPA course by course with AP, IB, honors, and dual enrollment credit, and keeps it alongside your college list and test scores.
Create a free accountFree to start. No credit card. Works for any high school grade level.