As the time to apply to college draws closer, many students notice one particular data point that typically sits on a corner of their high school transcripts: Cumulative Grade Point Average (GPA). Your cumulative GPA is the weighted average of grades you’ve received during a specified period, whether a quarter, semester, academic year, or your entire educational career. 

When placed in context, colleges see your cumulative GPA as an indicator of how well you’ll perform academically on campus, so it’s essential to understand how it’s calculated. Fortunately, calculating your cumulative GPA is easier than you might think!

How to Calculate Cumulative GPA

Grade – Letter Scale	Grade – GPA Scale
A	4.0
B	3.0
C	2.0
D	1.0
F	0.0

While every school calculates cumulative GPA a little differently, college-bound high schoolers should take it upon themselves to conduct a rough calculation to get a sense of their academic performance. Start with the chart above. Take all the letter grades you’ve received during the period you’d like to calculate your cumulative GPA and convert them using the conversion chart above. 

Next, multiply each grade you’ve converted to the four-point scale by the number of credit hours you took in that course. So, for a Biology course worth four credits for which you received a B (3.0), you should multiply four by three and wind up with twelve. Do this calculation for every class you’ve taken during the timeframe you’re interested in, and add everything together once you’re done. Do the same for the total number of credit hours.

Divide this first sum by the total number of credit hours, and you’ve wound up with a rough estimate of your GPA! Easy as that. So, for example, let’s say you’re calculating a cumulative GPA covering four classes you took last semester. You got two As, a B, and a C; each course was worth three credit hours. Your calculations should go as follows:

((4.0 x 3) + (4.0 x 3) + (3.0 x 3) + (2.0 x 3)) / (3 x 4)

(12 + 12 + 9 + 6) / (12)

(39/12)

Cumulative GPA: 3.25

How Grade Weighting Effects Cumulative GPA

It’s essential to remember the specific way your high school weighs courses (such as honors, AP, IB, etc.) when calculating cumulative GPA. At certain schools, for example, AP and IB courses are weighted by a factor of 1.1, meaning receiving a B in one of these courses (which typically translates into the 4.0 scale as a 3.0) means you actually received a 3.3. Consider grade weights during the first step when converting your letter grade to the 4.0 scale, and then continue with the calculation as normal. Doing so will sometimes yield a cumulative GPA above 4.0.

Why Cumulative GPA Matters in Elite College Admissions

By the time you’re applying to colleges in the fall of your senior year, your transcript can’t possibly include an overall GPA because you’ve yet to finish your high school career! Cumulative GPA, which schools typically calculate using your scores from every course you’ve completed between freshman year and now, is the second best option. In virtually all cases, except for those who apply to college after having graduated high school, cumulative GPA is what colleges will be looking at when evaluating your performance as a student.

Since every school calculates it slightly differently, there’s no such thing as a “good” or “bad” GPA in the context of elite college admissions and, of course, simply having a top GPA doesn’t in any way indicate that you’ll be a competitive applicant (it’s not just about having top grades in elite college admissions!). Yet, with respect to GPA, take a glance at the academic profile of admitted students at your target school to get a better sense of what’s considered a competitive GPA. At Harvard University, for example, 74.02% of those who applied in fall 2023 had a 4.0 in high school, and 94.4% graduated in the top tenth of their class. While we don’t know if this 4.0 figure is weighted, unweighted, cumulative, or overall, it suggests that anything less than a 4.0 won’t be very competitive.