Percentage to GPA Calculator
Convert a mark to a 4.0-scale GPA on both scales US schools use — they disagree more often than they agree.
90% on the 4.0 scale
Plus / minus
3.7
A-
Whole letters
4.0
A
The two scales disagree on 90%. Which one your school uses decides whether this is a 3.7 or a 4.0.
Plus/minus band
A- · 90–92%
Whole-letter band
A · 90–100%
What do you have?
A single mark, or your overall average. 0 to 100.
Two scales, two answers. A school using pluses and minuses cuts the bands every three points. One using whole letters cuts them every ten. Both are standard, and they disagree on 21 of the 41 marks between 60 and 100 — so check which one your school uses before you rely on either.
This converts a percentage, a letter grade or a GPA into the other two, on both of the grading scales American schools actually use.
It shows both answers because they often differ, and no other converter tells you that.
Converting a percentage to a GPA
A GPA is a number between 0 and 4.0 that stands in for a letter grade. An A is worth 4.0, a B is worth 3.0, a C is worth 2.0, and so on down.
Converting a percentage into that number takes one step: work out which letter the percentage earns, then read off what that letter is worth. The second half of that is standard everywhere. The first half is not.
Schools cut the bands in two different places. One kind uses pluses and minuses, so the letters change every three points or so: 87 to 89 is a B+, 83 to 86 is a B, 80 to 82 is a B-. The other uses whole letters only, and every mark from 80 to 89 is simply a B.
That is why the same mark gives two different GPAs. A 90 is an A- worth 3.7 at a plus/minus school and a straight A worth 4.0 at a whole-letter school. Between 60 and 100 the two scales disagree on 21 of the 41 whole marks — more often than they agree.
So the honest answer to "what GPA is an 87" is: 3.3 or 3.0, and your school decides which. This page gives you both and names them.
What to enter
- Percentage
- A single mark or your overall average, from 0 to 100. This is the direction most people want.
- Letter grade
- Pick the letter and see what it is worth in grade points, plus the percentage range that earns it on each scale.
- GPA
- Works backwards to the percentage range a GPA came from. This direction is an estimate, because a GPA is already a band rather than a single mark.
- Plus/minus scale
- Bands cut every three points or so, giving A-, B+, B, B- and the rest. Common in US high schools and most colleges.
- Whole-letter scale
- Five bands of ten points: A is 90 to 100, B is 80 to 89, and so on. This is the table College Board publishes.
What this assumes
Grade points use the standard unweighted 4.0 scale, where A+ and A are both 4.0. A handful of schools award 4.3 for an A+, which is why a transcript sometimes shows a GPA above 4.0 without any weighting.
Weighted GPA is not applied here. Honours and AP courses add a bonus to grade points across a whole transcript, not to a single mark — the GPA calculator handles that.
The whole-letter bands are College Board's published table. Their version prints D as 66 to 69 and F as below 65, which leaves 65 in a gap; it is counted as a D here rather than dropped.
Your school's handbook beats every table on this page. Cut-offs vary, and some departments set their own.
How to convert a percentage to a GPA by hand
Two steps, and the first one is where all the disagreement lives.
Find out which scale your school uses. Look at a report card or transcript. If you have ever been given a B+ or an A-, it is a plus/minus school. If grades are only ever A, B, C, D or F, it is a whole-letter school. This single fact changes the answer on more than half of all marks, so it is worth checking before anything else.
Turn the percentage into a letter. On a plus/minus scale the bands are three or four points wide: 93 to 96 is an A, 90 to 92 an A-, 87 to 89 a B+, 83 to 86 a B, 80 to 82 a B-. On a whole-letter scale each band is ten points: 90 to 100 is an A, 80 to 89 a B, 70 to 79 a C, 60 to 69 a D, below 60 an F.
Read off what the letter is worth. A is 4.0, A- is 3.7, B+ is 3.3, B is 3.0, B- is 2.7, C+ is 2.3, C is 2.0, C- is 1.7, D+ is 1.3, D is 1.0, F is 0. These values are standard — they are the one part of the conversion that does not change between schools.
For an overall GPA, average across courses. Convert each course to grade points, multiply each by its credit hours, add those up, and divide by the total credits. That is a different job from converting one mark, and the GPA calculator does it for you.
See a worked example: A 90% at two different schools
- Mark
- 90%
- School A
- Uses pluses and minuses
- School B
- Uses whole letters only
At School A, 90 falls in the 90 to 92 band, which is an A-. An A- is worth 3.7.
At School B, 90 falls in the 90 to 100 band, which is an A. An A is worth 4.0.
Same mark, same work, and one student has a 4.0 while the other does not.
The gap is 0.3 of a grade point on a single course. Across a full transcript it is the difference between a 4.0 average and a 3.7 — which some scholarships and honour rolls treat as a hard line.
3.7 or 4.0, depending on the school
Frequently asked questions
- What GPA is a 90 percent?
Either 3.7 or 4.0, and your school decides which. On a plus/minus scale 90 is an A-, worth 3.7. On a whole-letter scale 90 starts the A band, worth 4.0.
If you need a straight A on a plus/minus scale, 93 is where it begins.
- What GPA is an 87?
3.3 on a plus/minus scale, where 87 to 89 is a B+. 3.0 on a whole-letter scale, where everything from 80 to 89 is a B.
This is one of the 21 marks between 60 and 100 where the two scales give different answers.
- What is a 75 in GPA?
2.0 either way. On a plus/minus scale 73 to 76 is a C; on a whole-letter scale 70 to 79 is a C. A C is worth 2.0 on both.
The scales happen to agree in the middle of the C band, which is not true a few points either side of it.
- How do I convert a percentage to a GPA?
Find which letter the percentage earns at your school, then read off what that letter is worth: A is 4.0, A- is 3.7, B+ is 3.3, B is 3.0, and down from there.
The letter values are the same everywhere. Only the percentage cut-offs move, which is why the scale you use matters more than the arithmetic.
- Is a B+ a 3.3 or a 3.5?
3.3. The standard 4.0 scale sets B+ at 3.3, B at 3.0 and B- at 2.7, in steps of 0.3 and 0.4 rather than a neat half point.
A few schools round differently on internal reports, but 3.3 is what UNC, Chicago, UCLA and most US registrars publish.
- What percentage is a 4.0 GPA?
93% and up at a plus/minus school, because an A starts at 93 and 90 to 92 is an A-. 90% and up at a whole-letter school.
A 4.0 average across a transcript means every course landed in that band, not that the marks averaged to it.
- Why do two converters give me different GPAs for the same mark?
Because they picked different scales and neither told you. There is no single official percentage-to-GPA table in the United States.
College Board publishes a five-band version and says plainly to check with your school. Most colleges publish a plus/minus version. Both are correct for the schools that use them.
Problems people actually run into
Trusting a converter that only gives one number
Most of them do. You type 87, you get 3.3, and nothing on the page tells you that a whole-letter school would call it 3.0.
Always check which scale a converter used. If it does not say, it is right about half the time by luck.
Assuming 90% is automatically a 4.0
It is at a whole-letter school. At a plus/minus school it is an A- worth 3.7, and 93 is where the straight A starts.
This catches people applying to colleges that recalculate GPA themselves, because the recalculation may use a different scale from the one on the transcript.
Converting a GPA back to a single percentage
You cannot. A 3.0 means "somewhere in the B range", which is ten points wide on one scale and four on the other.
Any tool that gives you one exact percentage from a GPA is inventing precision the number never had. This one gives a range and says so.
Mixing up weighted and unweighted
A weighted GPA adds a bonus for honours and AP courses, often a full point, which is how a high-school GPA reaches 4.5 or 5.0.
That bonus applies to the course, not to the percentage. Convert the mark first, then apply weighting — and do it across the whole transcript rather than one grade.
Results are estimates for general information only and are not professional financial, medical, or legal advice. Read our full disclaimer.
Sources
- How to Convert Your GPA to a 4.0 Scale · College Board BigFuture
- Explanation of Grading System · University of North Carolina, Office of the University Registrar
- Grading · University of Chicago, Office of the Registrar
- Grading System · UCLA Dashew Center for International Students and Scholars
Last updated: September 26, 2026
