Step one, turn each letter into points
Every grade has a point value. An A is four, a B is three, a C is two, a D is one, and an F is zero, with a plus adding three tenths and a minus taking three tenths away. The one exception is that an A+ usually stays at four rather than climbing to 4.3, unless your school says otherwise. The full table lives on the GPA scale page.
Step two, multiply by credit hours
This is the step people skip, and it is the reason hand calculations usually come out wrong. Each course's point value gets multiplied by the number of credits that course carries, which produces what registrars call quality points. A four credit class counts twice as much as a two credit one, so the multiplication has to happen before any averaging.
| Course | Grade | Points | Credits | Quality points |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chemistry | A- | 3.7 | 4 | 14.8 |
| Calculus | B | 3.0 | 4 | 12.0 |
| History | A | 4.0 | 3 | 12.0 |
| Spanish | B+ | 3.3 | 3 | 9.9 |
| Seminar | A | 4.0 | 1 | 4.0 |
| Totals | 15 | 52.7 | ||
Step three, divide
Add every quality point figure together and divide by the total credits. In the example above that is 52.7 divided by 15, which comes to 3.51. That is the semester GPA, and it is the same number the registrar will print.
GPA = total quality points ÷ total credit hours
52.7 ÷ 15 = 3.51
Going from one semester to a cumulative figure
The same method scales up. Keep every quality point total and every credit total from each semester, add them all together, and divide once at the end. What you must not do is average your semester GPAs directly, because terms with different credit loads do not contribute equally and the result will not match your transcript. The cumulative calculator handles the weighting for you.
The exceptions worth knowing
Pass or fail courses normally earn credit toward graduation without carrying grade points, so they sit outside the calculation entirely. Withdrawals usually leave a W that does not count either. Repeated courses are the messiest case, since some schools replace the original grade while others average both attempts, and transfer credits often bring credit hours across without bringing grades. When your own figure disagrees with the transcript, one of these is almost always the reason.
Rather than doing any of this by hand, the college GPA calculator runs the whole thing as you type, and the guide to raising your GPA covers what to do once you know your number.