GPA Calculator
Universal GPA calculator across US 4.0, US 4.33, 5.0 weighted (AP/honors), UK/India percentage, Singapore NUS CAP (0-5), and HKU 4.3 scales. Dynamic course rows, cumulative GPA across semesters, target-GPA reverse calc, full letter-grade conversion table.
GPA Calculator
Grading scale
Courses this semester
Prior cumulative (optional — for multi-semester GPA)
Target GPA (optional — reverse calc)
To reach your target cumulative GPA
Letter-grade conversion — active scale
How to use the GPA Calculator
Pick the right grading scale
The scale your school uses is the single most important input. US universities: almost always 4.0 or 4.33 (check whether your school awards A+). US high schools: weighted 5.0 for AP/honors classes, unweighted 4.0 for regular. UK / India / Australia: percentage. Singapore (NUS, NTU): CAP 0-5. Hong Kong (HKU): 4.3 scale. Pick wrong and the number is meaningless — a 4.0 in the US ≠ a 4.0 in NUS CAP.
Enter each course with credit hours and grade
Credit hours weight the GPA — a 4-credit Calculus course counts more than a 1-credit lab. US standard is 3 credits per semester-long course; UK uses credit-equivalents (typically 15-30 per module). Add or remove course rows with the buttons. The hero number updates live as you change grades — useful for "what if I get a B in Stats?" scenarios.
Add prior cumulative for multi-semester tracking
Enter your prior cumulative GPA (from your transcript) and prior credits earned. The tool then weights this semester correctly against your accumulated record. A 4.0 semester moves a 3.0 cumulative very slowly if you've already completed 90 credits — math, not effort, dictates how fast a cumulative GPA shifts.
Set a target GPA for reverse-math
Enter a target cumulative GPA (e.g. 3.50 for cum laude, 3.70 for magna, 3.90 for summa) and remaining credits in your degree. The tool computes the average GPA you'd need across all remaining semesters to hit the target. If it returns above the scale max, the target is mathematically unreachable — useful early-warning information.
GPA, CAP, Honours classes — one transcript, many languages
There is no global grading currency. A student finishing a degree in Singapore writes "CAP 4.50" on a CV. A student finishing in the UK writes "2:1 (Upper Second-Class Honours)". A student finishing in the US writes "GPA 3.7". A student finishing in India writes "75%". These four students may have done essentially equivalent work — but the moment any of them applies for a job, scholarship, or graduate programme in a different country, the receiving institution has to do a translation. That translation is messy, often wrong, and frequently decided by an admissions officer with three minutes and a conversion chart of dubious provenance. Understanding what your own number means in your own system — and roughly what it looks like in the systems you might one day enter — is one of the highest-leverage pieces of administrative knowledge a student can hold.
The US 4.0 GPA system — the default global benchmark
The US 4.0 GPA is the most globally portable academic number, mostly because the US has the highest density of graduate programmes and employers that ask for it. Mechanically: each letter grade maps to a numeric point (A=4.0, B=3.0, C=2.0, D=1.0, F=0), the points are multiplied by the credit hours of the course, summed, and divided by total credits. Most US schools use the "+/−" extension — A− = 3.7, B+ = 3.3, and so on — which gives finer resolution. Some schools (Caltech, MIT historically, a handful of others) award A+ = 4.33, producing maxima slightly above 4.0; most do not. The 4.0 system was popularised by US universities in the early 20th century and is now used by virtually every American institution from K-12 through graduate school. Latin honors thresholds are calibrated to this scale: cum laude usually 3.50, magna cum laude 3.70, summa cum laude 3.90 (exact cutoffs vary by school).
The UK Honours classification — degrees, not GPAs
The UK does not use GPAs for undergraduate degrees. Instead, final classification falls into four bands: First-Class Honours (1st) = 70%+, Upper Second (2:1) = 60-69%, Lower Second (2:2) = 50-59%, and Third-Class (3rd) = 40-49%. A 2:1 is the de facto cut-off for "good degree" in UK employer terms — most graduate schemes and competitive professional programmes require 2:1 or above. The percentage thresholds feel low to American students because UK exam marking is genuinely tougher; a 70% in a final-year Cambridge paper is roughly equivalent to an A- to A in a US programme. The UK system is also moving slowly: Cambridge, Oxford and St Andrews give Honours classifications; some newer UK institutions are adopting US-style GPAs alongside the traditional bands to ease international transferability.
Your GPA is a number that opens or closes doors for the first 5 years of your career. After that, it's a forgotten footnote. The same is true in every country — high school in Singapore, college in the US, university in the UK.
The Indian percentage system — and its conversion problem
Indian universities historically marked everything as a raw percentage out of 100. 60%+ was considered First Class, 50-60% Second, 40-50% Third, below 40% Fail. CBSE board exams, IIT JEE, JNU, Delhi University — all percentage-native. The conversion to US 4.0 is where things get awkward: WES (World Education Services), the standard credential evaluator US graduate schools use, applies a conversion that many Indian students find painful (60% → roughly 3.0, 70% → roughly 3.7, 80%+ → 4.0). The fact that Indian undergraduate degrees are marked on tougher curves than US ones is generally not reflected in WES's mapping. Newer Indian universities (IIITs, the IITs, IIMs) increasingly publish CGPAs on a 10-point scale that converts more cleanly to the US 4.0 (divide by 2.5, roughly). This tool's percentage option uses a fair, widely-accepted conversion table that splits the difference.
Singapore NUS CAP and the ASEAN scale zoo
Singapore's two flagship universities, NUS and NTU, both use the Cumulative Average Point (CAP) system on a 0-5 scale. A=5.0, A−=4.5, B+=4.0, B=3.5, B−=3.0, C+=2.5, C=2.0, D=1.0, F=0. The Singapore Honours classification rides on top of this: Honours with Highest Distinction (CAP 4.50+), Honours with Distinction (CAP 4.00-4.49), Honours with Merit (CAP 3.50-3.99), Honours (CAP 3.00-3.49). This is the modern restyling of the old British "First / 2:1 / 2:2" classes — Singapore quietly retired the old names around 2014 because they were causing endless conversion problems for employers and graduate schools. The rest of ASEAN is more varied: Malaysia mostly 4.0 GPA, Indonesia mostly 4.0, Philippines mostly 4.0 (though some institutions famously use an inverted scale where 1.00 is the best grade and 5.00 is failing — easy to mistranslate), Thailand 4.0, Vietnam either 4.0 or a 10-point scale depending on university. Hong Kong's HKU uses a 4.3 scale (A+ = 4.3); Chinese University also 4.3; Polytechnic University 4.0. China's Tsinghua and Peking use 4.0 GPA, though the underlying percentage-to-GPA conversion is institution-specific. For students crossing borders within ASEAN — and there are a lot of them — knowing what your CAP looks like in someone else's currency is genuinely useful.
10 Things to Know About GPAs
The 4.0 GPA system was popularised by Mount Holyoke College in 1897 and spread through US higher education in the early 20th century. Before that, US schools used everything from descriptive grades ("Optime", "Bene") to raw percentages.
Brown University, Reed College, MIT (for first-year students), and Hampshire College famously do not report GPAs at all. Brown uses a credit-no-credit option that hides grades from the transcript entirely if the student chooses.
Latin honors thresholds at most US universities: cum laude = GPA 3.50, magna cum laude = 3.70, summa cum laude = 3.90. Some elite institutions (Harvard, Yale) use class-rank percentiles instead — top 5% summa, next 15% magna, next 30% cum laude.
Singapore Honours system uses old British naming, restyled in 2014: Honours, Honours with Merit, Honours with Distinction, Honours with Highest Distinction. The CAP cut-offs are 3.00 / 3.50 / 4.00 / 4.50 respectively on the 0-5 scale.
Harvard grade inflation: the median Harvard undergraduate grade is now A−, and the most-awarded grade is A. A 2013 internal report disclosed by the Dean's office made this public — and embarrassed the institution into limited reform.
GPA-to-percentage conversion is famously unreliable. WES (World Education Services), the standard credential evaluator for US graduate-school applications, applies conversions that often disadvantage students from tougher-grading systems (UK, India, parts of Europe).
A UK First-Class degree (1st) requires 70%+ in final-year exams. This sounds low to American students but reflects much tougher marking — a 70% in a Cambridge Tripos paper is roughly equivalent to a US A grade.
The Philippines university system contains both standard 4.0 GPAs and inverted scales (where 1.00 is the highest grade and 5.00 is failing). Students transferring across institutions in-country must explicitly state which system their transcript uses.
Weighted vs unweighted high-school GPA in the US: weighted scales (5.0 max) reward AP, IB, and honors classes with an extra grade point — letting an exceptional student finish high school with a 4.5 or even higher. Most US universities recalculate to unweighted 4.0 for admissions.
Hong Kong's HKU 4.3 scale (A+ = 4.3) was adopted in 2012, replacing the older British-style classification. Chinese University also uses 4.3; PolyU uses 4.0. The 0.3 difference at the top end matters when converting to US grad-school applications.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Use the scale your transcript uses — that's the only number that matters for official purposes. US college: 4.0 (or 4.33 if your school awards A+). US high school: weighted 5.0 for AP/honors students, unweighted 4.0 otherwise. UK / India / Australia: percentage. Singapore (NUS, NTU, SMU): NUS CAP 0-5. Hong Kong (HKU, CUHK): 4.3. If you're converting between systems for grad-school applications, run it in both scales and report whichever matches the receiving institution's documents.
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On the US 4.0 scale, 3.0 is the conventional "good enough" benchmark — it's the cut-off most graduate programmes screen on, the minimum for many honor societies, and the typical "minimum to apply" for competitive internship and graduate scheme programmes. But it's not "outstanding" — that's 3.5+ (cum laude territory) and 3.7+ (magna). For employers, a 3.0 is rarely a differentiator; for selective grad schools, 3.5+ is increasingly the real cut-off despite the official 3.0 minimum.
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Rough approximation: divide your CAP by 1.25. CAP 5.0 ≈ US 4.0, CAP 4.5 ≈ US 3.6, CAP 4.0 ≈ US 3.2, CAP 3.5 ≈ US 2.8. This isn't a defensible official conversion — for US grad-school applications, NUS provides a transcript with an explanatory CAP key, and WES applies their own conversion (which may differ from this estimate). Use this calculator's "switch scale" feature for a side-by-side view of where you'd land on each.
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Conventional conversion: UK 2:1 (60-69%) ≈ US GPA 3.3-3.7, UK 1st (70%+) ≈ US 3.7-4.0, UK 2:2 (50-59%) ≈ US 2.7-3.3, UK 3rd (40-49%) ≈ US 2.0-2.7. Be cautious: a UK 2:1 is genuinely tougher to achieve than a US 3.3 GPA because UK marking is harsher across the board. WES and most US grad schools acknowledge this informally but the official conversion charts don't always reflect it.
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Each course's grade point gets multiplied by its credit hours. A 4-credit Calculus class with an A (4.0 × 4 = 16 points) counts more than a 1-credit lab with an A (4.0 × 1 = 4 points). The sum of all grade-points divided by the sum of all credits gives the weighted average. This means a single bad grade in a high-credit course hurts more than the same bad grade in a low-credit elective — the math is unforgiving.
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It computes the average GPA you'd need across your remaining semesters to hit a cumulative target. Useful for: "I want to graduate cum laude (3.50) — what do I need to average over the next 30 credits?" If the tool tells you the required GPA is above the scale maximum (e.g. 4.2 on a 4.0 scale), the target is mathematically unreachable from where you are — better to know early than discover it in senior year.
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No. By the time you have a university transcript, your high-school GPA is effectively invisible. Even your college GPA fades fast — by year 3-5 of your career, employers look at work experience and skills first. The honest research consensus: GPA matters most for your first job out of school and for graduate-school applications. After that, it's a footnote on the CV that recruiters rarely re-read.
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Unweighted: all courses use the standard 4.0 scale, so the highest possible GPA is 4.0. Weighted: AP, IB, and honors courses get an extra grade point (A=5.0 instead of 4.0), letting exceptional students finish high school with weighted GPAs of 4.3, 4.5, or higher. Most US universities recalculate to unweighted for admissions decisions — but report weighted GPAs alongside class rank when applying so the admissions office sees the full picture.
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Grade inflation = average grades drifting upward over time without underlying improvement in student work. Harvard's median grade is now A−; the most-awarded grade is A. Yale, Brown, Stanford show similar trends. The practical effect: a 3.7 GPA today doesn't signal what a 3.7 GPA signalled in 1990. Selective grad schools and elite employers adjust internally — they know which institutions inflate and discount accordingly. Public-university grade inflation has been slower but is also real.
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No. All calculation happens entirely in your browser via JavaScript. Open DevTools → Network and watch — there is zero outbound traffic. Your course names, credit hours, grades, prior GPA, and target numbers never leave your device.
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