How to Calculate Your GPA–Letter Grades and Percentages
One of my most popular posts is about how to calculate your “real” GPA. Some readers have asked how to translate grades expressed as a percent into letter grades, and then into a GPA based on a 4.0 scale.
Below is a chart that can serve as a starting point. Recognize, however, that all schools and colleges will have their own grading policies. This is one way to translate one kind of grade into another. It’s meant as a helpful tool, but you should always investigate how individual colleges and schools handle this translation before making any assumptions about how they will consider your own performance.
If you’re worried about your GPA, it’s likely that you are a bit nervous about how your GPA will affect your admission to college. There are three things to keep in mind.
First, it’s not just about your GPA overall. You need to pay close attention to your core GPA.
Second, you need to think first about which colleges fit you best. It may turn out that you are worrying too much for the wrong reasons.
Third, if you are having trouble fitting all these pieces together–your GPA, your test scores, your interests, your aptitudes–you may want to consider asking for some professional advice from an expert who can help you navigate the college admissions process.
Interested in a free consultation? Send me a note!
Mark Montgomery
Educational Consultant
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About the Author
Mark Montgomery
As a former professor, administrator, and high school teacher, Mark has the knowledge and skills to counsel students as they make the transition from high school to college.
224 Responses to “How to Calculate Your GPA–Letter Grades and Percentages”
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hi, i have 87/100 in percentage grades(college) here in mexico,,,what is my GPA?? ive herad a 3.3, 3.4 or even 3.2, ,, do i stand a chance to u of miami, u of texas and g washington university.
i am a transfr student.
thanks a lot
Hi
I am student from India. I would like to know how to gpa from a scale of 10 to a scale of 4. My University grades us relatively.
Thanks
Hi.
You do not need to translate your GPA. The colleges in the USA will do this for you. Do not attempt to do this yourself. If you do, your attempt is likely to decrease your chances for admission.
Hello. Do not translate your GPA. Colleges and universities in the US will do it for you. They will judge you in your own context in Mexico, and they will be familiar with the grading systems in Mexico. Again, do not attempt to make this conversion on your own, or you are likely to weaken your application.
Good luck.
Hemin,
You calculate the GPA the way your school does. That is what will be reported–along with the explanation you provide. Different places do it differently. There is no single standard.
Thanks for writing in.
How exactly do you know what your gpa is and how do you calculate your grades to get your final gpa what is an a b c or d worth.
An A is worth 4 points, a B is worth 3 points, a C is worth 2 points and a D is worth 1 point.
Hello, Hossein,
I cannot understand why you would use the Indian system as the equivalent of the Iranian educational system. Your “real GPAs” are those offered by Iranian institutions. You should not try to translate them. Just give them to the American institutions (or report your rank as top 10% of your graduating BSc class). Making up equivalents on the 4.0 scale is something left to credentialing services like World Educational Services (WES).
Good luck.
Hello,
I am transfering to a university in Colima Mexico. Do I need to figure the conversion before registering? they function on a 10 pt scale as well. Or does the school handle that like in the US.
Is this conversion chart above weighted or unweighted?
Hi, Angie,
The Mexican university should be able to handle this. Do make sure you have good contacts in the registrar’s office in your current university, should you need to have the two universities connect and communicate. Also make sure you have official copies of your transcript with you when you go down there in signed, sealed envelopes. Don’t try to make the translation of GPA yourself, but do be a good advocate for yourself–and one who is well-prepared. You might also want to print out the official grading policies of your current university and have copies of that on hand, too.
Suerte!
Hi, Erica. This conversion chart doesn’t relate to weighted or unweighted. If you want to learn more about weighted and unweighted grades, please see this post: http://greatcollegeadvice.com/weighted-or-unweighted-gpa/ .
Thanks for writing in.
My son is a ninth grader who is taking the following honor classes: Adv. Geometry, Living Environment, Global History Pre-AP. He is also taking Italian and regular English. His unweighted GPA is 3.3. We debate over the fact that maybe he should drop of one his honor classes to try and help raise his gpa. He is involved in a sport every season (track & field and cross country). He made varsity track as a 9th grader. He plays in his school’s orchestra (violin since third grade). He is also involved in the SADD club (which is students against destructive decision making). He wants to keep his classes. But is this the way to go given his gpa is at a 3.3?
Thank you for your advice.
I currently have a 2.2 university gpa in canada and am going back to the usa to transfer to a university in my home state. what would this gpa translate to???
HI, My Gpa is 3.3, can i get into a good Architecture school with that? or do i need to improve it?
Hi, Kevin,
I’d need more context to be able to help you answer the question definitively. However, architecture school–as an undergraduate–is very competitive. Sorry I can’t be more specific than that. Good luck, and study hard!
Hi, Diane. Your question is an important one, and one that is difficult to answer with great specificity without understanding all the circumstances. Your son should strive for balance. He should also play to his strengths. He should challenge himself as much as possible, but if he is getting grades of C routinely, then perhaps he needs to pull back in that subject in order to succeed more. There is no hard and fast rule. Balance. I’d also make sure that his extracurricular involvements were not having a negative impact on his academic performance. More balance. Easy to say, difficult to achieve.
Best regards.
How can I help, Nate?
I’m from India, and I have a UG percentage of 75.5. But the course is challenging and the highest score is 82.5. In calculating GPA, do they consider the relative position as well as difficulty of course, or do they just see my “absolute” value of 75.5?
Thanks…
I just received a copy of my official transcript. I am in a school following the American System and I am in grade 10. In all my previous report cards I have received a 4.0 GPA. I was surprised that in my transcript it says my GPA so far is a 3.74. Do they count the percentages of all your courses for your transcript, but not your report card? And does it matter if I have a high A or a low A for my GPA?
Your transcript, should it hold the average of the percentages of all your courses or is it just your average GPA?
Hi Mark,
Thank you for your advice about my ninth grade son and aiming for balance. One point of clarification…with a 3.3GPA (3.7 weighted), he has solid B+ in each class however, is this not good enough as of course a 90+ always looks better? Despite his solid B+’s in the accelerated classes (coupled with extra curricular activities) should he forgo one or two accelerated classes and hopefully if the work is less demanding he can pull 90+ average in some of his core classes? His feeling is these classes push him more and I feel will better prepare him for college, but maybe this is not the way to go given his GPA?
I currently have a 2.6 as a sophmore. My parents are conserned that i wont be able to get into a good college. I dont have a lot of time because i play sports all year round(football,wrestling,track). I was just wondering is it really possible to get into a good college for architecture with my gpa?
Quinton,
Architecture is very competitive. Grades are super-important. Your parents have a valid concern. Playing sports is great, but if the sports get in the way of your academics, well, that’s a problem. College is about academics, not about athletics (unless, of course, you are a top Division 1 player, in which case things are different).
But here’s the rub: what is a “good college”? You will find colleges that will accept a 2.6 GPA. But that’s not the sort of GPA that any college is going to beat your door down (“please, Quinton, you’re so smart and capable…won’t you please come here to study?”). A 2.6 means that you have quite a few C grades on your transcript, and not a whole lot of A grades. And if you take out the fluff (like gym and arts and business), is your “core GPA” really a 2.6, or something lower than that.
The bottom line is, Quinton, is that colleges want to see you doing well in school. It’s nice you are doing well on the playing field and the wrestling ring. But ultimately what college you attend will depend much more on your grades than on your sports. Sorry to break it to you…!
Your transcript will have all of your courses on it, and your GPA will be calculated from all your courses.
Hope this helps.
Hi.
Each school may calculate your GPA a bit differently. I’d have to look at the transcript myself in order to interpret what is happening. Sorry not to be of more immediate help.
Kartik,
Admissions people will look at the entire context of your scores, including the difficulty of the course.
Hope that helps a bit.
hi in the indian cce pattern of grades i have a 9.6 on 10 how do i convert this into a score more acceptable to us colleges.
How do you calculate a GPA when you are graded quarterly and then get 2 semester grades and a final year grade? My private school does not calculate GPAs nor do they do class rank. I’ve read that you should not include arts courses (which is not really fair since many kids find singing or playing an instrument easy while other struggle with it; same for photography or visual arts). Would you include electives like 1/2 semester classes in geology, oceanography, forensics, micro and macro economics? Or do you leave that out of your GPA as well? Should you stay in a regular class and try and get an A? Or push for an AP class and get a B but a 4-5 on the AP exam? My school has a rigorous process of essay, teacher rec, and B+ in all 4 quarters to advance to the AP level. The AP exams look easy compared to the classes we take.
Any advice would help. I am also in the Global Scholars Prg at my school & will graduate with distinction. How important are summer activities. We are having financial difficulties, so I can’t take the programs I would like to over the summer. I have great outside activities (I don’t do sports as I focus on my academics but do get involved with organizations like the UN, State Dept, Int’l Olympic Committee, town newspapers). Thank you so much!
My high school uses a 7point grading scales. 93-100 is an A. 86 to 92 is a B. etc. All A’s are then assigned a 4. B’s a 3. Etc. I feel this in unfortunate for me because most schools assume an A to be 90 and above. Could you tell me what my GPA(4.0scale) would be if my school had 90 and above to be an A? My GPA is a 3.2 on our scale.
Thanks soo much!
hello Mr.Mark
i am an American diploma system in Egypt , my SAT Score is 1700/2400
my SAT Subject Test Score is 1380/1600 distributed on Biology/Math
and i likely going to have around 3.9 GPA so can i Know how to turn them into percentage !! because here for pharmacy college which i hope i have the percentage for it needs me to have 108% so is this scores enough ?
Hi, so i am a rising senior , my junior year was absolutely the worst year im in the international bachelorette program and i have an unweighted GPA of 2.98 and a weighted GPA or 3.98. i do A lot of extra curricular activities and am either vice president ,secretary or hold some kind of position in them. I am also captain of my field hockey and soccer team do you think i could get into a good college or any college as a matter of fact. i very worried and i hope i get time to raise my GPA before deadlines
Hi, Karen. Your despair is palpable…but chin up. All is not lost. You are a good student working hard. I’m sorry the 11th grade year wasn’t better, but you’ll be rewarded by many colleges. Will you be competitive for the top 25 most selective colleges in America? Probably not (though your test scores still mean a lot, and it depends on which activities and how high your level of accomplishment in them). But are there fantastic colleges that will be eager to accept you? Absolutely! If you need help to identify which ones make the most sense for you (both in terms of admission and in terms of financial aid, should you need it), give me a holler. We work with students from all over the US!
Best of luck!
Hi. You should not convert. The American colleges and universities will do this for you. DO NOT make any “conversion” or translation of your official school documents. Messing with these documents can only hurt you.
Hope that is helpful. Best of luck!
Hi, Diane. Your son is making the right choices. It’s hard to see our smart kids get lower grades than they might in other classes. But as you say, we are preparing him for what comes next. To dumb it down in order to get an A really doesn’t do him justice in the longer run. We want to set him up for long term success, not just for “getting in” to this or that place. Keep your eye on the long term. It can be hard sometimes (I know…I am a father of a high school kid). But it’s the right thing to do.
Best of luck.
Hi, Amir,
You can’t turn all of this into a percentage score easily on the US system. I can’t tell if you are seeking to enter pharmacy school in Egypt or the US. If in the US, everything will depend on which university you are applying to.
Hope this helps.
Christian,
Colleges will see how your school grades when they read the school profile. Admissions officers will then take this discrepancy into account as they calculate/evaluate your transcript. Don’t worry. Admissions people are used to seeing these disparities.
Good luck.
Hi,
Suppose I get 75 % in my ISC (INDIAN SCHOOL LEAVING EXAM) what would my GPA be. And what does unweighted and weighted mean?
Thanks,
Alan
Hi, Alan. Your GPA is whatever marks you received from secondary school…apart from your school leaving examination. You do not need to worry about the difference between unweighted and weighted, as you are not being educated in the US system–this is a unique characteristic of US secondary schools. Do not try to translate or convert your Indian school marks or exam results into something resembling a US GPA. Colleges and universities in the US will know how to interpret your academic record. Hope this helps.
Hello Mark,
We’ve just run into an issue with the order with which the steps for calculating GPAs taken.
After the student completes the course a numeric grade is calculated based on the 0-100% scale. From that using the particular school’s criteria the grade is converted to an A-F grade. Those letter grades are assigned points and in this case lets say 0-4. Those points are then weighted, added and averaged.
I’ve just witnessed that with the wonders of modern technology, the schools are skipping the conversion of each class to a letter grade and the conversion from the letter grade to its assigned point value. They are totaling the numeric grades(0-100% scale) for all the classes, and then averaging to end up with a numeric average for all of the classes and grades. They then convert that percentage to the 0-4 scale.
The latter process one might contend is more accurate, however this will not give the same results as method used before the reliance on computerized grading systems.
If you were to just take the transcript as I did, assign those letter grades based upon the school’s criteria and average, you will end up with a different GPA than the computerized calculation from the class numeric grade.
We calculated a 3.0148148…… GPA from my son’s letter grades on the transcript yet the school had a 2.93!
B- or B? This is probably a very unique case where one is above 3.0 while the other is below but it can be critical if he is applying for programs requiring a 3.0 minimum.
Whewwww!
So, has this been an issue elsewhere?
What is the top 25 of your class? What would your gpa be then in order to be in the top 25 just curious
Hello Sir,
I am from Pakistan and I have passed a 2 years bachelors of commerce degree. So, I have completed 14 years of education and I want to apply in undergraduate program as a transfer student. I want to ask that how can I make an approximate about the percentage into GPA? as you said, I am not converting in my documents, but just calculating on calculator for my own knowledge. Because each college requires different GPA. For instance, if a college requires GPA 4 but my percentage converted into GPA by that college is less than 4 eventually how would I know? So, I want to make an estimate before applying to colleges that I can get admission to.
For instance, If my percentage into GPA is 3, I would not bother applying for a college requiring a GPA 4.
Thats what I want to know. I hope you would help me.
Thanks.
Miranda,
It depends on the size of your class. You are in the top 25% if you are doing better than the bottom 75%. In other words, if your graduating class is 200 students, you would have to be one of the top 50 in order to be within the top 25%.
Thanks for writing in!
Hi, Gigi.
You raise a lot of questions. I’ll tackle the one about how to calculate the GPA. Take your semester grades, convert to numbers, then tally them up and divide by the number of semester courses you have taken (or the number of grades you are adding). This is how you do an average of any type…add and divide. Anything that is an academic core course you may including things like geology and economics.
To address your other questions, everything is important on your application. It all counts. How it is all weighed is not a scientifically answerable question. But it will all be considered by most colleges with holistic review processes. Hope that helps. Good luck!
Dear Zee,
I’m not able to answer your question without knowing more. The best thing you can do is estimate where you fell in your current academic class. Are you in the top 10%? 25%? 50%. That is a rough guess of what colleges will want from you. The top tier will want you in the top 10% or higher. The next tier is fine with the top 25%. And so on. You have to look realistically at where you fall, academically, within your own context in Pakistan. That is how you will be judged. The GPA numbers are irrelevant to you.
Hope that helps a little bit.
Dear Steve,
You have discovered that the GPA is a little statistic that can have thousands of slightly different variations, depending on what is calculated and how. My only words of wisdom are these: it doesn’t matter all that much. The fact is that the grades teachers give–upon which the averages are based–are themselves rather arbitrary and subject to manipulation. This process of evaluating student performance is woefully flawed, and cannot be done on a scientific or statistical basis. And colleges don’t do it. Up to a point, the GPA provides a guide to relative performance: how well is one kid in one class (or one school) doing against another kid in the same circumstance. Colleges do not compare one kid with a 3.0148148 with a kid with a 2.93 and say, categorically, that student 1 is better than student 2. They have taken different courses at different schools, so we have to put the numbers into some other sort of context. Colleges do this all the time, and they do it pretty well–if imperfectly. So don’t worry so much. Just let the numbers stand and know they are imperfect. They provide a ballpark guide–that’s all.
hello , i’m from iran and i plan to apply for US. universityies this fall … my sat 1 score is 2350 and sat subject test scores are 800/800/800 (math1&2/physics) and my IBT(toefl) score is 115 out of 120 and i also have delf(a1/a2/b1/b2) french proficiency tests which make me eligible for immigration to canada or france but the problem is i studied in the best school of iran which had diffrent system from other schools in iran and our exams are much harder than others so my grades are not really good ,i got 18.5 out of 20 and i don’t know what my gpa would be in US. … but the question is, i plan to apply for ivy leagues universities such as Harvard ,do you think i have a good or strong chance ???
Hi, Tina,
You are clearly a great student. Don’t worry too much about your grades at this point. You would be seriously considered by top universities in the US. So give it a shot. However, the most highly ranked universities are not necessarily going to be the best for you. If you’d like help with your applications, please let us know. We work with students from all over the world. Best of luck to you!
Hello. I am a senior student right now and my GPA is 3.4. I want to become a surgical assistant. I was wondering if I can get into Washington State University with a 3.4 GPA?
Is this right?
I have keyboarding, honors english, honors math, honors science, honors social studies, and art. current grades are 92, 95, 100, 91, 95, and 99. I’m coming up with a 3.87GPA. Honors in my school is a 5.0 for A, 4.0 for B and so on.