About the Semester Grade Calculator
This calculator finds your overall semester grade from three components — a Term 1 grade, a Term 2 grade, and a final exam grade — each contributing a percentage weight that you set. It then converts that percentage into a letter grade and traditional 4.0 GPA points.
The formula
Semester grade is a straightforward weighted average:
Semester Grade = (Term1 × w1 + Term2 × w2 + Final × w3) ÷ 100
where w1, w2, and w3 are the weights (as percentages) assigned to Term 1, Term 2, and the final exam. Because the weights are percentages of the whole grade, they must add up to 100. A very common default at many schools is 40% for each term and 20% for the final exam, but some courses weight the final more heavily (for example 30/30/40) or skip a final exam entirely (50/50/0). Enter whatever weights your syllabus specifies.
Worked example
With a Term 1 grade of 88%, a Term 2 grade of 92%, and a final exam grade of 85%, weighted 40/40/20:
Semester Grade = (88 × 40 + 92 × 40 + 85 × 20) ÷ 100 = (3,520 + 3,680 + 1,700) ÷ 100 = 89.0%, which falls just under the A cutoff — a B on the standard 10-point scale.
Letter grade and GPA conversion
The calculator maps your percentage to a letter grade using the standard US 10-point scale (A: 90-100, B: 80-89.99, C: 70-79.99, D: 60-69.99, F: below 60), then converts that letter to the traditional unweighted 4.0 GPA scale (A = 4.0, B = 3.0, C = 2.0, D = 1.0, F = 0.0). Individual schools sometimes use plus/minus grades or a weighted GPA scale for honors and AP courses — check your school's specific policy if your transcript needs to match exactly.