Free College GPA Calculator

For some people, GPA is a nightmare. For others, it’s the reason to be proud of themselves. But the truth is—if you live in the USA and you’re a student, you’re affected by this cursed number and constantly want to raise it. In this short guide, you’ll know how to calculate GPA, what components you should know, and what form to use.

We also made a pick of best free tools to calculate your total GPA. These are online calculators where you can fill in a couple of fields and get an instant result.

Need to learn the formula? Then, you’re also in the right place!

On this page, there’s a detailed guide on how to convert letters and percentages into GPA, including helpful tables and easy to calculate formulas. Feel free to save these assets to your desktop or share with friends on Facebook.

🏆 10 Best College GPA Calculators

Want to know your GPA?

That’s easy!

And there are many online free tools to help you out.

We’ve collected 10 semester GPA calculators that are extremely comfortable and helpful. All you need to do is to put in some information into one of these GPA counters.

1. GPA - College GPA Calculator.

This website has the most comfortable calculator for estimating your GPA. You can add as many classes as you need, use a simple 5-point scale or a 13-point one, combine semester, and more.

The usage is easy:

  • Enter your course name (if you want to).
  • Choose the letter you earned based on your form.
  • Choose the number of credits for the course based on your form.
  • Repeat for every course.
  • Add a new semester if you need to.

As long as you add new indicators, your semester and overall GPA change without even clicking a key-button.

This service has a convenient interface and pleasant design.

2. GPA - College GPA Calculator.

Another user-friendly tool you should give a try!

Within this service, you can extract your GPA from letter grades in no time.

Remember that GPA isn’t just an average of your grades—you should also take into account the number of credits.

To figure out your college GPA, do the following steps:

  • Name your course if needed.
  • Choose your letter grade from the list.
  • Enter the number of credits.
  • Repeat for every course.
  • Add semesters if needed.

Your list can be as long as you want. Include all the courses to see the whole picture.

3. UCSB Undergraduate Education

USCB Grade-Point Average (GPA) Calculator.

A useful tool to learn your study statistics.

Firstly, enter the total number of courses. Then, fill in the fields Course, # of Units and Letter Grade.

As soon as you’re done, click Calculate and know your GPA, Total Grade Points, and Grade-Point Balance.

4. Swarthmore College

This tool is appropriate for middle school and college students.

Standardly, you can enter up to 8 courses. That’s not really comfortable, but you can always upload the page and enter new courses.

It supports 5-point scale and 12-point scale, so enter any letters you need.

This service is also full of helpful material for college students. Learn more about GPA itself, classes’ shadowing, credits’ transferring, AP and IB credits, and more.

5. Grade-Point Average (GPA) Calculator.

Here you can count GPA for up to 10 subjects at once. The functional is as easy as always—put in your information and get instant results.

You can fill in any grades whether they have pluses and minuses or not.

The website also contains useful tips on how to raise GPA and improve your grades.

Following the two basic tips will help—attend classes carefully and plan your work as a pro.

6. Coastal Carolina University

Another quick way to figure out your GPA. There are actually three GPA calculators—two cumulative GPA tools and one to calculate your semester grades.

On the website, you’ll also find dozens of guides and useful info.

7. Snow College

Snow College GPA Calculator.

This website combines GPA calculation tool with the table for converting letters’ grades to points.

Below the table, there’s also another tool to figure out your cumulative GPA. For this purpose, you need to know your previous GPA and credits.

On Snow College, you can also find Cost Calculator and useful study tips.

8. Scholaro GPA

Scholaro is an international GPA Calculator.

Scholaro is an international GPA calculator that allows you to convert grades or points from any country to the U.S. grades and calculate GPA.

Choose the country and grading scale, type your grades and find out your GPA. The tool also allows you to save the GPA report.

Scholaro will be especially helpful for international students who plan to apply to US schools, colleges or universities.

9. College Simply

This is not only the way to learn your GPA. It’s also a great database to find a college you deserve.

College Simply has a specific database that can advise an appropriate college for any GPA. It also estimates your chances to get in these or other colleges.

The good point:

You can sort all the results by states.

This was the list of GPA calculators for one and multiple semesters, 5-point and 13-point scales, weighted and unweighted indicators, and more.

You’ll definitely find one appropriate for you and use helpful tips to raise your GPA.

✅ What is GPA?

Before you start calculating your GPA, there is an essential part of the understanding what does GPA stands for.

In this short chapter, you’ll learn answers to the following questions:

  1. What is GPA?
  2. What is the difference between weighted and unweighted credits?
  3. Why is it important to get the highest GPA you can?
  4. Where can you apply GPA you’ve earned?

Let’s start!

1. What is GPA?

GPA means Grade Point Average and is familiar to every high school or college student. Each semester there is a specific number of hours or credits you can learn by attending your lessons or completing exercises and writing papers.

At the end of the semester, your GPA is calculated to show your overall performance. Here’s why it’s significant to know if your results are weighted or not. Weighted courses demand more efforts but increase your GPA more effectively. Learn how to check your GPA for the better understanding of the grading system.

2. What is the difference between weighted and unweighted credits?

If your school or college use unweighted GPA, that means all your grades are measured on a scale of 0 to 4. When you earn an A, you get 4.0 on GPA scale.

But if your college uses weighted GPA, the scale extends to 5.0 or even higher in some cases.

What does that mean?

It means, you can earn higher grades in specific courses. Usually, they are tagged as AP or Honors classes, but you need to ask professors if these courses are weighted in your school or college or not.


For a regular student, studies are a marathon to earn the highest GPA. Why is that so significant? Because your average GPA has a huge weight on your academic success.

The most significant function of GPA is the usage of this scoring system by universities when accepting graduates.

4. Where can you apply GPA you’ve earned?

There’s a list of situations where your GPA is necessary to estimate your skills.

For example:

  • applying for contests and scholarships
  • participating in organizations
  • getting hired
  • joining college clubs
  • ranking for medals and prizes

There’s also a vital fact—if your GPA is low or some courses have low grades, there’s a danger of being expelled. This is the reason why students are so stressed out about calculating their GPA and finding tips to improve it. But don’t worry! There are a lot of ways to do both of these things. And we’ll talk about them in this blog post.

☝️ How to Calculate My GPA?

Every student in some moment of their life is puzzled by the question “How to calculate college GPA?” We’re here to tell you—you can calculate it quick and easy.

In this chapter, you’ll see a step-by-step instruction on how to figure it out. Here, you’ll also find useful scales that you can download to your device and use anytime for precise calculations!

Step 1

Write down the letter grades and credit hours for the semester. This data is given to you by the college.

Here ‘s an example:

Course Letter Grade Credit Hours
History A 3
Literature B 4
English B+ 3
Biology A- 4

Step 2

Convert your letter grades into GPA. Computing GPA on 4.0 scale is easy. All you need to do is to use one of the tables below.

There are 3 types of grading that your college may use. Let’s name them 5-point, 12-point, and percentage scales.

  • 5-point scale

Looking for GPA converter on 4.0 scale? There’s no need to, because here’s a simple table you can remember or download to your device.

Letter Grade GPA
A 4.0
B 3.0
C 2.0
D 1.0
F 0.0
  • 12-point scale

Some colleges choose the extended version of the scale to estimate students’ performance. This is the same table as before but with the addition of +/- equivalents.

Letter Grade GPA
A+ 4.0
A 4.0
A- 3.7
B+ 3.3
B 3.0
B- 2.7
C+ 2.3
C 2.0
C- 1.7
D+ 1.3
D 1.0
F 0.0
  • Percentage scale

And the last grading scale is for those who gain percentages instead of letters. The usage is simple—find the range that contains your percentage grade and choose the appropriate GPA.

Percent Grade GPA
97-100 4.0
93-96 4.0
90-92 3.7
87-89 3.3
83-86 3.0
80-82 2.7
77-79 2.3
73-76 2.0
70-72 1.7
67-69 1.3
65-66 1.0
0-65 0.0

Step 3

Calculate your grade points. For this purpose, you should multiply every course’s GPA by its credit hours. Then, find out its sum and the sum of credit hours.

For our grades, we get the following results:

Course Letter Grade Credit Hours Grade Points
History A (4.0) 3 4.0 x 3 = 12
Literature B (3.0) 4 3.0 x 4 = 12
English B+ (3.3) 3 3.3 x 3 = 9.9
Biology A- (3.7) 4 3.7 x 4 = 14.8
Total 3 + 4 + 3 + 4 = 14 48.7

Step 4

Divide the number of grade points by the average of credit hours:

48.7/14 = 3.48

There it is! Your GPA is calculated, and now you can decide how to improve it.

But what if you’re looking for overall GPA?

Then, you need to make the next step.

Step 5

Calculate your overall GPA by dividing the sum of total grade points by the sum of total credit hours.

Sounds difficult?

Then, look at this example:

Semester GPA Credit Hours Grade Points
1 3.5 12 3.5 x 12 = 42
2 3.7 14 3.7 x 14 = 51.8
3 4.0 13 4.0 x 13 = 52
4 3.6 12 3.6 x 12 = 43.2
Total 12 + 14 + 13 + 12 = 51 189

Grade Points sum / Credit Hours sum = Overall GPA
189/51 = 3.7

Now you can calculate both cumulative and overall GPA with the help of our examples and scales. The formula is easy to use, but we’re ready to answer your questions in comments!

🤔 Is My GPA Enough?

We’re often asked by students if their GPA good/bad/needs improvement/enough and so on. This is great that you’re interested in your GPA improving because you’ll need at many situations in your life.

But the point is—this is a really relative issue. You are the only one who knows if your GPA is enough.

But we won’t leave you without any help, so let investigate some criteria that may help you with the decision.

1. Medical, law, and business schools

If you want to get into a medical, law, or business school after graduation, you need to do your best at gaining the highest GPA.

According to, you’ll need to get at least 3.7 to get into 10 top law schools and 2.7 to less successful ones.

For medical schools, these numbers are—3.7 for top schools and 3.4 for others.

For business schools, these numbers are—3.5 for top schools and 2.8 for others.

Note, that all these indicators are approximate, and you have to check every school you’re going to attend for their minimal requirements.

Also, mind that your expected GPA should be higher than the one you’re aiming at. Why? Because you shouldn’t only reach the lowest level. You also compete to be the best graduate.

2. Career

Some employers hire new candidates based on the combination of their skills, experience, and college GPA.

Such way isn’t a standard one, but many companies have high requirements in terms of your GPA. Try to make a list of places you want to work at and include their minimal GPA. It would motivate you to study harder and get better grades.

3. Scholarships & contests

As a student, you may not miss the chance to win a scholarship for further studies or investigation. The same thing is true about joining various contests.

The fact you need to know:

  • Often, participation requirements include high GPA.
  • Carefully read all the requirements to know if your GPA is appropriate to apply. Usually, the minimum starts at 3.0, so you need to study hard.

For example, here’s a couple of 2018 scholarships:

  • Stamps Scholars
    Barry University

    A scholarship for a room, books, tuition, and other, plus additional $6,000 for studying abroad. The choice of winner is based on an essay and video sent to the commission.
    Requirements: minimum of 3.5 GPA, first-year students only, leadership activities.

  • Scholarships at UGA
    University of Georgia

    Full tuition scholarship for students with excellent academic skills.
    Requirements: minimum of 3.9 GPA, academic achievements, leadership activities.

  • National Alumni Scholarship
    Drake University

    Full tuition plus $3,000 Trustee Scholarship.
    Requirements: minimum of 3.9 GPA, high test scores, academic achievements.

  • Freshmen Scholarships
    Louisiana State University

    Full tuition plus $2,000 to study abroad and other programs.
    Requirements: minimum of 3.5 GPA, USA only.

  • Miami University Merit Scholarships
    Miami University

    Half or full tuition.
    Requirements: minimum of 3.5 GPA.

Remember, that it’s significant to learn well for the length of all 4 years to win full tuition. This way, it doesn’t matter what your degree or year is, you have to put a lot of efforts into studies.

By the way, some colleges won’t allow you to participate clubs or organizations if your GPA is low.

In this guide, we answered such important questions as:

  • How to calculate college GPA?
  • How to use college GPA calculators?
  • What online GPA tools are the best?
  • Why improve your GPA?
  • Why is it dangerous to earn low GPA?

Now it’s time to apply this knowledge and make your own calculations! We hope, these reviews and tools were useful and wish you luck with increasing your grade point average!