GPA Scales Explained: 4.0, 4.3, 5.0, Percentages & Letter Grades

What a GPA actually is

A grade point average is nothing more than a credit-weighted average of your course grades, translated onto a numeric scale. Each letter grade maps to a number of grade points, each course carries credit hours, and the GPA is Σ (grade points × credits) ÷ Σ credits. Everything that makes GPAs confusing — 4.0 versus 4.3 versus 5.0, percentages versus letters, CGPA versus GPA — is just a different choice of mapping, not different math. This guide lays out the major scales side by side so you can translate between them.

The US 4.0 scale

The near-universal baseline in the United States maps letters to points in 0.3–0.4 steps:

The percent bands are conventions, not laws — individual courses set their own cutoffs, which is why the same 91% can be an A at one school and an A− at another. Our grade converter uses the mapping above as its default.

The 4.3 (and 4.33) scale

Some institutions — including many Canadian universities and a minority of US colleges — award an A+ worth 4.3 (or 4.33) points, extending the same ladder one rung higher. The subtlety when comparing students across systems: a straight-A student on a strict 4.0 scale cannot exceed 4.0, while the same performance under a 4.3 system might read 4.2. Graduate admissions offices know this and read GPAs against the issuing school's scale, so never "convert" your 4.0-scale GPA onto a 4.3 scale or vice versa without labelling it.

The 5.0 weighted high-school scale

US high schools often report a weighted GPA on a 5.0 ceiling: honors courses earn +0.5 and AP/IB courses +1.0 on top of the standard points, so an A in AP Calculus counts 5.0 while an A in regular art counts 4.0. This is a bolt-on to the 4.0 scale rather than a different scale — the base mapping is unchanged and only course rigor adds bonus points. The differences, and how college admissions actually treat them, get a full treatment in our weighted vs. unweighted GPA guide, and the weighted GPA calculator computes both numbers at once.

Percentage systems

Much of the world skips letters entirely and grades in percent. What trips students up is that the same number means different things in different countries. In the US, 85% is a middling B; in the UK or India, 85% is an exceptional result, because marking conventions concentrate scores in a lower band — a UK first-class degree starts at 70%, and Indian universities historically award "distinction" from 75%. Never compare raw percentages across borders without translating conventions first; that is precisely the mistake credential evaluators are paid to avoid.

How the major systems line up

The table below shows approximate equivalences for strong, good, average and passing performance across five common systems. Treat it as orientation, not an official conversion:

United Kingdom: degree classifications, not GPAs

UK universities do not compute a GPA at all. Degrees are classified from weighted module marks: First (70% and above), 2:1 (60–69%), 2:2 (50–59%), Third (40–49%). Because a First begins at "only" 70%, US readers routinely underrate UK transcripts; a 75% average in the UK signals roughly what a 3.8–4.0 signals in the US. When UK students apply to US graduate schools, a 2:1 is usually treated as equivalent to about a 3.3–3.6 GPA — but each admissions office publishes its own equivalence, which always outranks any table.

Canada: one country, many scales

Canada is the cautionary tale of GPA comparison: scales are set per university, not nationally. Many Ontario and BC schools use 4.0 or 4.33 letter scales; some institutions grade primarily in percentages; a few use 9- or 12-point systems. The result is that "a 3.7 from Canada" is meaningless without naming the school and its scale. If you are converting a Canadian transcript, work from the university's own official scale table — our Canada conversion page summarises the common ones.

India: the 10-point CGPA

Indian schools and universities widely use a 10-point CGPA (Cumulative Grade Point Average). CBSE popularised the rule-of-thumb conversion percentage ≈ CGPA × 9.5, so a 8.2 CGPA reads as roughly 78%. Universities often use SGPA (semester GPA) per term and CGPA overall — our SGPA→CGPA and CGPA→percentage tools implement the standard formulas. For US applications, a CGPA of 8.0+/10 from a rigorous program is commonly read in the same band as a 3.6–3.8/4.0, but — as everywhere in this guide — the evaluating institution's own table is final.

Converting between scales without fooling yourself

Three rules keep conversions honest. First, convert at the course level when you can, not the average level: converting each grade and then averaging is more accurate than converting the final average, because rounding compounds. Second, never chain conversions (percent → letter → 4.0 → 10-point) — each hop adds error. Third, for anything official — university applications, credential evaluation, employer checks — use the receiving institution's published equivalence or a recognised evaluation service rather than any online table, ours included. Informal conversions are for orientation and planning; official ones are a different product. For quick orientation, start with the grade converter or the country pages under international GPA conversion.