How to Calculate Your Semester GPA

What you need

• The grade for each course this semester.
• The credit hours for each course.
• Your university's grade-point scale.

Five steps

1. Look up the grade points for each grade.
2. Multiply grade points by credit hours for each course.
3. Add those quality points together.
4. Add the credit hours together.
5. Divide quality points by credit hours and round per your university's rule.

Example

Four courses of 3 credits each, graded A (4.0), A- (3.7), B+ (3.3), and B (3.0):

Quality points = 3×(4.0 + 3.7 + 3.3 + 3.0) = 3 × 14.0 = 42. Credits = 12. Semester GPA = 42 ÷ 12 = 3.50.

Prefer not to do it by hand? Open the GPAWorld calculator and pick your university — it uses that university's own grade points, rounding, and CGPA formula.

Where hand calculations go wrong

• Averaging instead of weighting. Adding your grade points and dividing by the number of courses ignores credit hours entirely. It only gives the right answer when every course happens to carry the same credits.
• Including pass/fail courses. A course graded P or CR usually earns credit toward the degree but carries no grade points, so it belongs nowhere in the division.
• Excluding a failure. An F earns no credit but is still averaged in at 0 points. Dropping it inflates the result.
• Borrowing another university's point values. A− is 3.7 at many universities, 3.67 at some, and does not exist at others. Use your own institution's table.
• Rounding too early. Round once, at the end. Rounding each course's quality points first introduces an error that compounds across the semester.

Then update your CGPA

Once you have your semester GPA, you can roll it into your cumulative average. See how to calculate CGPA with credit hours.