Calculate your cumulative GPA from any number of courses. Add courses and credits below.
GPA (Grade Point Average) is a weighted average of your grades, where higher-credit courses have greater impact on your GPA than lower-credit courses. Each letter grade converts to grade points on a standard 4.0 scale: A/A+ = 4.0, A- = 3.7, B+ = 3.3, B = 3.0, B- = 2.7, and so on down to F = 0.0. Your GPA is the sum of (grade points × credit hours) for all courses, divided by total credit hours.
This weighting means a 4-credit course counts twice as heavily as a 2-credit course. If you earn an A in a 4-credit class and a C in a 2-credit class, your average is (4.0 × 4 + 2.0 × 2) / (4 + 2) = (16 + 4) / 6 = 3.33, not simply (4.0 + 2.0) / 2 = 3.0. Understanding this helps you prioritize — a bad grade in a 4-credit required course hurts your GPA much more than the same grade in a 1-credit elective.
Cumulative GPA encompasses all courses taken across your entire college career. Term (or semester) GPA covers only the current academic period. Both matter but serve different purposes. Cumulative GPA is what appears on your transcript and is used by employers and graduate schools. Term GPA tells you your current trajectory — whether you're improving, declining, or holding steady.
A strong term GPA can gradually lift a poor cumulative GPA, but the math works slowly when you have many credits already on the books. Early in your college career, each semester's grades have large impact on cumulative GPA because there are few total credits. By senior year, even a 4.0 semester barely moves a cumulative GPA much, because it's averaged against many prior semesters.
Most employers who request GPA use it as a basic screening threshold, typically 3.0 or sometimes 3.5 for competitive positions. Once you're past that threshold, GPA usually matters much less than internship experience, skills, and interview performance. The notable exceptions are certain structured recruiting pipelines at investment banks, consulting firms, and some government positions where GPA remains a formal cutoff throughout the process.
Graduate school admission uses GPA more meaningfully, though rarely in isolation. A 3.5 GPA at a rigorous institution often carries more weight than a 3.9 at an easier one — admissions committees understand institutional grade inflation. Strong GRE/GMAT scores, research experience, and compelling letters of recommendation can compensate for a lower GPA in many programs, particularly when the applicant can explain a difficult period or demonstrate significant subsequent achievement.
If your GPA suffered in early semesters, mathematical recovery is possible but requires sustained high performance. The more credit hours already completed, the slower the recovery. With 30 credits completed at a 2.5 GPA (75 grade points), earning a 4.0 for 30 more credits raises your GPA to 3.25 — a meaningful improvement. Earning a 4.0 for the remaining 60 credits of a 120-credit degree raises it to 3.5.
Some schools offer grade forgiveness or grade replacement policies that recalculate GPA when a course is retaken, substituting the new grade for the original. If your school offers this, understanding exactly which courses it applies to is valuable — one replaced D+ in a 4-credit course could move your GPA more than several strong semesters of normal coursework.