Calculate semester GPA with weighted courses. Supports AP, IB, and honors weights.
Many high schools award extra grade points for Honors, AP, IB, or Dual Enrollment courses to reflect their added difficulty. This calculator lets you mark each course by level and applies the appropriate weighting bonus, producing both your weighted and unweighted GPA side by side.
Standard (college-prep) courses use the normal 4.0 scale. Honors courses typically add 0.5 to the grade value, and AP/IB/Dual Enrollment courses typically add a full 1.0 — so an A in an AP class often counts as 5.0 instead of 4.0. Weighting scales vary by school district, so this calculator's defaults should be checked against your school's official policy if the number needs to match your transcript exactly.
Unweighted GPA treats every course the same regardless of difficulty, capping out at 4.0. Weighted GPA rewards rigor, which is why a student's weighted GPA can exceed 4.0 (sometimes reaching 4.5 or 5.0). Colleges often recalculate applicants' GPAs using their own formula, so a weighted GPA is a useful planning number but isn't always the figure a college uses in admissions.
It varies by school, but a common convention is +1.0 grade point for AP/IB/Dual Enrollment courses and +0.5 for Honors courses. Some districts use a flatter +0.5 for everything, or cap the maximum weighted GPA. Check your school counselor's official policy for the exact figures.
Many colleges recalculate GPA using their own methodology, which may ignore school-specific weighting entirely or apply a standardized weighting scheme instead. Your school-reported weighted GPA is still useful for class rank and for understanding your own transcript.
Yes. Because AP, IB, and Honors courses add bonus points on top of the standard scale, a strong student's weighted GPA commonly falls in the 4.2–5.0 range, even though 4.0 remains the ceiling for the unweighted scale.