High School GPA Calculator (US) weighted and unweighted
Enter each course's grade, credit weight and level. You get the weighted GPA, the unweighted GPA and the gap between them.
Credits Do the Weighting
A GPA is a credit-weighted mean, not a plain average of grades.
Weighting Is School Policy
The +0.5 and +1.0 boosts are the common US convention, not a national standard.
What is a weighted GPA?
At a Glance
An unweighted GPA puts every course on the same 4.0 scale, so an A is 4.0 whether it was AP Physics or study hall. A weighted GPA adds a bonus for harder courses — typically +0.5 for honors and +1.0 for AP, IB or dual enrollment — which is why weighted GPAs can exceed 4.0.
Every GPA is the same formula. Each course contributes its grade points multiplied by its credit weight; you divide the total by the credits.
GPA = Σ (grade points × credits) ÷ Σ creditsThe letter grades map to the standard scale: A and A+ are 4.0, A− is 3.7, B+ is 3.3, B is 3.0, and so on down to F at 0.0. A+ is capped at 4.0 rather than 4.3, which is what most US transcripts record.
A failed course earns no boost. An F in an AP class is 0.0, not 1.0 — a failing grade cannot be improved by the course being difficult.
The defaults are five one-credit courses: an A and a B+ in AP, an A− in honors, and a B and an A in regular classes.
Unweighted first
Grade points 4.0, 3.3, 3.7, 3.0, 4.0 sum to 18.0. Divided by 5 credits: 3.60.
Add the course-level boosts
The two AP courses gain a full point each (5.0 and 4.3); the honors course gains half (4.2). The regular courses are unchanged.
Weighted result
5.0 + 4.3 + 4.2 + 3.0 + 4.0 = 20.5, divided by 5 credits: 4.10.
What the weighting was worth
4.10 − 3.60 = 0.50, from 2 AP credits and 1 honors credit.
Carry in a prior record
With a prior 3.60 across 24 credits, the cumulative weighted GPA becomes 3.69 — not the 3.85 you would get by averaging 3.60 and 4.10, because the 24 prior credits outweigh this term's 5.
Colleges usually recalculate. Many US admissions offices strip the weighting, drop non-academic courses, or apply their own scale. Keep the unweighted number to hand — it is the one most likely to be used.
The boost values are a convention, not a rule. Some districts add 1.0 for honors, some use a 5.0 scale throughout, some weight only certain subjects. If your school publishes its policy, use those numbers rather than these.
Credit weights matter more than students expect. A year-long course at 1.0 credit counts twice as much as a semester course at 0.5. Getting these wrong distorts the result more than a single grade does.
This page covers six courses. For a longer transcript, run terms separately and carry each result forward through the prior-GPA fields.
A+ is treated as 4.0. If your school genuinely awards 4.3, this calculator will read slightly low.
For the general college version with credit hours, use the GPA Calculator. To convert a GPA to a percentage or another country's scale, see the GPA to Percentage Converter.