Grade Calculator

This grade calculator can compute your weighted grade based on the grades achieved for each component of the course. It can compute grades in various formats, including percentages, letter grades, or the point values of the grades. You can also choose to provide an overall grade you wish to achieve; if this option is selected, the calculator will compute the grade you need to achieve on your remaining assignments or exams, assuming that the total weight is 100. If you want to calculate the grade needed on the final exam to achieve a desired overall grade, please use our Final Grade Calculator.

What is a weighted grade?

A weighted grade is one in which all the assessments in a course have different degrees of importance, or "weight." For example, a course may involve homework, quizzes, exams, projects, presentations, and more. Typically, exams have a larger weight than quizzes and homework, since exam results are often considered to be the most important assessment in a course.

As an example, a course may have exams that account for 50% of the final grade, while quizzes make up 30%, and homework makes up 20%. This means that a 95 on a homework assignment and a 95 on an exam do not carry the same weight; a 95 on an exam has more of an effect on the final grade than a 95 on a homework assignment because it has a larger weight.

How weighted grade is calculated?

There are different formulas for calculating weighted grades depending on the information available. This calculator assumes a total weight of 100 and uses the following formula to calculate the weighted grade, where w_i is the weight of the respective grade g_i:

For example, given the following grades and respective weights,

the weighted grade is computed as follows:

92.75 is the current weighted grade based on the grades achieved thus far. Since the calculator assumes a total weight of 100, there are still remaining grades that together have a weight of 80. Once the values of the remaining grades and their weights are known, the final weighted grade can be computed in the same manner as above. In cases where the assessments (exams, quizzes, homework, etc.) have weights in terms of percentages, the weighted grade can be computed by finding the average grade attained for each assessment, then multiplying by their respective weights. Given that w_i is the weight in percentage form of the average grade g_i achieved in each respective assessment: Weighted grade = w₁g₁ + w₂g₂ + w₃g₃ + ...+ w_ng_n For example, given that a student's homework is worth 20%, quizzes are worth 30%, and exams are worth 50%, if a student achieved an average grade of 85 on all their homework assignments, an average of an 87 on all their quizzes, and an average of 83 on all their exams, their weighted grade is calculated as follows:

(85)(0.2) + (87)(0.3) + (83)(0.5) = 84.6

Thus, their weighted grade is an 84.6.

What are the different grade formats?

The calculator uses three different grade formats: percentage, letter, and point value.

Percentages:

Percentage grades are grades expressed in percentage form. They range from 0-100%, and are calculated by dividing the score earned by the student by the total possible score on the assessment. For example, consider a multiple-choice exam in which all the questions are worth the same number of points. To calculate a student's percentage grade, divide the number of questions the student answered correctly by the total number of questions, then multiply by 100. This is the student's percentage grade. For example, if a student answered 39/50 questions correctly on an exam, their percentage grade is:

Percentage grades are related to letter grades through a grading scale. Grading scales vary throughout institutions, so an A at one school may not correspond to the same percentages as another. Refer to the table below in the "Letter grades" section to see how percentages and letter grades are related in one of the more commonly used grading scales in the US.

Letter grades:

Letter grades range from A-F in the US grading system, where an A is the highest achievable grade, and an F is a failing grade. However, even within the US system, there are variations in what each letter represents, as well as in the letters used in the system. For example, there are institutions that use grades such as A+, B-, C+, etc., while there are others that do not make use of plus and minus grades, and only use the letters A, B, C, D, and F. Also, depending on the institution, a D, or even a C, might constitute a failing grade for the course.

Letter grades correspond to a specific range of percentage values. The range of values assigned to a given letter differ based on the grading scale, but are generally pretty similar. The following table shows a commonly used grading scale, and the corresponding letter and percentage grades.

Point value:

Point value grades refer to grades where the points earned for all assessments in the course are summed; the grade achieved in the course is calculated by dividing the total number of points earned by the total number of points possible. There can be any number of points in this type of grading system.

For example, a course may have 10 homework assignments worth 20 points each, 5 quizzes worth 50 points each, and 3 exams worth 150 points each. To be able to determine the weight of each type of assessment, it is necessary to find the total number of points for all the assessments in the course. In this case,

10(20) + 5(50) + 3(150) = 900

Thus, the course has a total of 900 points making homework worth 22.2% of the final grade, quizzes worth 27.8%, and exams worth 50%. We can also determine how much each individual assessment is worth. For this example, each homework assignment is 2.2%, each quiz is 5.5%, and each exam is 16.67% of the final grade.