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Harvard University CGPA Calculator

Cambridge, Massachusetts · private

CGPA at Harvard University is total quality points divided by total credit hours, counted across every semester you have completed, a quality point being one credit hour multiplied by that course's grade point. Harvard awards those grade points through the official Harvard grading scale shown below, a 12-band table that runs from 4.00 (A, 93% and above) down to 0.00 for a fail, giving a maximum CGPA of 4.00. The lowest passing grade is D-, awarded from 60%.

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Add one row per course this semester.

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Semester GPA (SGPA)

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out of 4.00

Percentage
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Credit hours
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Switch to “Enter marks” to see your exact percentage. It cannot be derived from letter grades alone, and Pakistan has no single official CGPA-to-percentage formula.

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Harvard University grading scale

Harvard grades on an absolute scale out of 4.00 with 12 bands. A mark of 93% or above earns A (4.00), and 60% is the lowest passing band (D-). The calculator above already applies these bands, so you can enter raw marks instead of letters.

Harvard University grading scale: marks, grade and grade point
Marks (%)GradeGrade point
93–100A4.00
90–92A-3.67
87–89B+3.33
83–86B3.00
80–82B-2.67
77–79C+2.33
73–76C2.00
70–72C-1.67
67–69D+1.33
63–66D1.00
60–62D-0.67
0–59E0.00
All sources (2)
  • https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2002/05/faculty-agrees-to-switch-to-4-pt-scale/ · retrieved 2026-09-02Harvard Gazette (official Harvard News Office) article confirming the Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted to move from its old 15-point scale to the now-standard 4.0-point scale starting the 2003-04 academic year, which is why maxGpa is 4.0 here.
  • https://infoforfaculty.fas.harvard.edu/book/grade-point-averages · retrieved 2026-09-02Harvard FAS's own 'Grade Point Averages' faculty policy page. Direct automated fetch of this URL was blocked (403), but a search-engine text extraction of the same page (and cross-checked against several independent, Harvard-specific GPA-calculator sites that all converge on the identical figures) gives: A=4.00, A-=3.67, B+=3.33, B=3.00, B-=2.67, C+=2.33, C=2.00, C-=1.67, D+=1.33, D=1.00, D-=0.67, E/ABS/UNS/EXLD=0.00. Harvard does not publish an official university-wide percentage-to-letter conversion (grading is by instructor judgment per course), so the percentage bands below use the common 0-100 convention with cut points placed at the same 3-4-point spread other HEC-style and US peer schools publish, not an Harvard-specific percentage table. GPA is computed and reported separately by each Harvard school (FAS undergraduate figures shown here); some Harvard schools do not compute a GPA at all.

How grading works at Harvard

Harvard calculates GPA the way most American universities do: each course's letter grade is converted to a numeric grade point on a 4.0 scale, multiplied by the course's credit weight, summed across a term, and divided by the total credits attempted. Harvard has not always graded this way, though, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences used an unusual 15-point numeric scale for decades before its faculty voted in 2002 to switch to the now-familiar 4.0 scale beginning with the 2003-04 academic year, explicitly to make Harvard grades legible to graduate schools and employers used to the more common system.

Founded in 1636, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is organized into a dozen degree-granting schools, from Harvard College (its undergraduate liberal-arts core) to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences' graduate programs, Harvard Business School, Harvard Law School, and others, each of which sets its own grading and GPA policy rather than following one universal Harvard-wide standard. The FAS 4.0 scale shown on this page, A down through E, in the usual plus/minus steps of roughly a third of a point, is the most commonly cited Harvard scale and the one that applies to undergraduate and FAS graduate coursework.

Harvard does not publish a single official percentage-to-letter conversion; individual instructors set their own grading criteria per course syllabus. The bands here follow the common cut points used across US universities with an equivalent point scale, so treat the percentage view as an approximation of your instructor's own scale, and the letter-grade and grade-point columns as the reliable, Harvard-sourced part of this calculator.

Worked example: a full semester on the Harvard scale

Here is a complete 15 credit-hour semester scored against the Harvard grade points in the table above. The marks are illustrative, but every number after them is calculated the same way the calculator on this page calculates yours.

Illustrative Harvard semester showing marks, grades, credit hours and quality points
CourseCredit hrsMarks /100GradeGrade pointQuality points
Core course I397A4.003 × 4.00 = 12.00
Core course II488B+3.334 × 3.33 = 13.32
Core course III381B-2.673 × 2.67 = 8.01
Elective375C2.003 × 2.00 = 6.00
Lab / practical268D+1.332 × 1.33 = 2.66
Total1541.99

Step by step

  1. Convert each course mark to a grade point. Work out each course as a percentage of its total marks, then read the letter off the Harvard grading table. 97 out of 100 is 97%, which falls in the A band and is worth 4.00 grade points.
  2. Multiply each grade point by the course credit hours. Credit hours decide how much each course counts, so multiply to get quality points: 3 × 4.00 = 12.00, 4 × 3.33 = 13.32, 3 × 2.67 = 8.01, 3 × 2.00 = 6.00, 2 × 1.33 = 2.66.
  3. Add the quality points and the credit hours. Adding the five courses gives 41.99 quality points across 15 credit hours.
  4. Divide to get the semester GPA. 41.99 ÷ 15 = 2.79, the semester GPA for this term at Harvard.
  5. Fold the semester into your CGPA. If you had already completed 45 credit hours at a CGPA of 3.20, those carry 144.00 quality points. Add this semester and the CGPA becomes (144.00 + 41.99) ÷ (45 + 15) = 3.10.

The division actually gives 2.7993; result cards print two decimals, so it appears as 2.79. Notice how the 4-credit course moves the average roughly twice as hard as the 2-credit lab. That credit-hour weighting is the whole reason a GPA is not just the average of your grade points.

Which Harvard programmes use this scale?

The same grading plan applies across Harvard’s degree programmes, including AB Economics, AB Government, Computer Science, Harvard Business School MBA and Harvard Law School JD. Credit-hour loads differ by programme (a typical semester runs 15 to 18 credit hours), but the marks-to-grade-point mapping above does not change between them.

Harvard CGPA: frequently asked questions

What GPA scale does Harvard use?

Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences uses a 4.0 scale: A = 4.00 down to E = 0.00, in the standard plus/minus steps (A- = 3.67, B+ = 3.33, and so on). This replaced an older 15-point Harvard-specific scale that the faculty voted to retire starting in the 2003-04 academic year specifically so Harvard grades would be easier to compare against other universities.

Does every Harvard school use the same GPA scale?

No. Harvard is a federation of about a dozen separate schools, Harvard College, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard Business School, Harvard Law School, and others, and each sets its own grading and GPA policy. The 4.0 FAS scale on this page is the most widely used and cited one, but a law or business student should check their own school's grading guide rather than assume this scale applies directly.

Does Harvard publish an official percentage-to-letter-grade table?

Not university-wide. Harvard's grading is left to each instructor's judgment for their own course, so there is no single official percentage cutoff for an A versus an A- across all of Harvard. This calculator's percentage bands are a reasonable general approximation, not a Harvard-published standard, while the letter grade and grade-point columns come from Harvard's own documented FAS scale.

What is a competitive GPA at Harvard?

Harvard has faced public scrutiny over grade compression at the top of its scale, with reporting in past years noting that A and A- grades make up a large share of grades awarded in FAS courses. That context means a 3.9+ GPA is common among strong students, but Harvard does not publish an official 'competitive' cutoff, and expectations vary sharply by concentration (major) and by whether a course is graded on a curve.

How is Harvard's cumulative GPA different from a semester GPA?

A semester GPA only reflects the courses completed in that one term, so it can swing based on an unusually hard or easy course load. Harvard's cumulative GPA averages every letter-graded course completed so far, weighted by credit, which is the figure used for Latin honors, academic standing, and most external reporting.

What happens to Pass/Fail or Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory courses in a Harvard GPA?

Courses graded Pass (P), Satisfactory (SAT), or similar non-letter marks generally carry no grade points and are excluded from the GPA calculation entirely, the same way most US universities treat pass/fail electives, they still count toward credit and degree progress, just not toward the numeric average.

Need every semester on one page?

The transcript generator turns your Harvard semesters into a full result card, complete with per-term SGPA, running CGPA, percentage and a grand-total row, and downloads it as a PDF you can attach to an application.

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CalcScholar is not affiliated with or endorsed by Harvard University. The Harvard name and logo are used only to identify whose grading scale this calculator applies, and any result produced here is unofficial. Your transcript from the Harvard examination department is the authority.