The Pennsylvania State University CGPA Calculator
University Park, Pennsylvania · public · est. 1855
At The Pennsylvania State University, your CGPA is the credit-hour weighted average of every course you have taken: multiply each course's grade point by its credit hours, add those quality points across all your semesters, then divide by the total credit hours. Grade points come from the official Penn State grading scale shown below, on which 93% or more earns A (4.00 points) and the maximum CGPA is 4.00. The lowest passing grade is D, awarded from 60%.
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.
The Pennsylvania State University grading scale
Penn State grades on an absolute scale out of 4.00 with 9 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.
| Marks (%) | Grade | Grade point |
|---|---|---|
| 93–100 | A | 4.00 |
| 90–92 | A- | 3.67 |
| 87–89 | B+ | 3.33 |
| 83–86 | B | 3.00 |
| 80–82 | B- | 2.67 |
| 75–79 | C+ | 2.33 |
| 70–74 | C | 2.00 |
| 60–69 | D | 1.00 |
| 0–59 | F | 0.00 |
All sources (2)
- https://www.registrar.psu.edu/grades/grading-system.cfm · retrieved 2026-09-02Penn State Office of the University Registrar's official 'Grading System' page, fetched directly. Confirms the letter grades Penn State actually issues for undergraduate coursework: A, A-, B+, B, B-, C+, C, D, F, genuinely narrower than most peer universities. Penn State does NOT use C-, D+, D-, or A+ for undergraduate grading (the page notes A+ only ever appeared in a pre-2012 Master of Laws grading system, not undergraduate).
- https://www.registrar.psu.edu/grades/grade-point-average.cfm · retrieved 2026-09-02Penn State registrar's companion 'Grade-Point Average' page, fetched directly. Confirms the exact numeric values for the letter grades above: A=4.000, A-=3.670, B+=3.330, B=3.000, B-=2.670, C+=2.330, C=2.000, D=1.000, F=0.000. Penn State computes both a Semester GPA and a Cumulative GPA per its own policies 51-30 and 51-50.
How grading works at Penn State
Penn State's GPA works on the standard credit-weighted formula, but its actual letter-grade roster is noticeably narrower than most large public universities': Penn State's registrar confirms undergraduate courses are only ever graded A, A-, B+, B, B-, C+, C, D, or F. There is no C-, no D+, no D-, and no A+ at all for undergraduates, which means the bottom third of Penn State's scale (D and below) has far fewer gradations than a school like UT Austin or Florida that offers a full C-/D+/D- ladder.
Founded in 1855 as Pennsylvania's sole land-grant university, Penn State computes two distinct figures from its registrar-published grade points (A=4.000 down through F=0.000): a Semester GPA covering only the courses completed that term, and a Cumulative GPA covering a student's entire Penn State record, governed respectively by university policies 51-30 and 51-50.
Because Penn State skips several of the plus/minus grades most peer universities use, a Penn State transcript can look meaningfully different from one built on a full thirteen-grade scale even when the underlying academic performance is similar, a C+ student elsewhere might simply be a straight C at Penn State, since there's no C- to absorb marginal performance below it. Penn State does not publish one official percentage-to-letter-grade table applied to every course, so the percentage bands here follow the common convention layered on top of Penn State's own confirmed, registrar-sourced grade points.
Worked example: a full semester on the Penn State scale
Here is a complete 15 credit-hour semester scored against the Penn State 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.
| Course | Credit hrs | Marks /100 | Grade | Grade point | Quality points |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Core course I | 3 | 97 | A | 4.00 | 3 × 4.00 = 12.00 |
| Core course II | 4 | 91 | A- | 3.67 | 4 × 3.67 = 14.68 |
| Core course III | 3 | 85 | B | 3.00 | 3 × 3.00 = 9.00 |
| Elective | 3 | 81 | B- | 2.67 | 3 × 2.67 = 8.01 |
| Lab / practical | 2 | 72 | C | 2.00 | 2 × 2.00 = 4.00 |
| Total | 15 | 47.69 |
Step by step
- 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 Penn State grading table. 97 out of 100 is 97%, which falls in the A band and is worth 4.00 grade points.
- 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 × 3.67 = 14.68, 3 × 3.00 = 9.00, 3 × 2.67 = 8.01, 2 × 2.00 = 4.00.
- Add the quality points and the credit hours. Adding the five courses gives 47.69 quality points across 15 credit hours.
- Divide to get the semester GPA. 47.69 ÷ 15 = 3.17, the semester GPA for this term at Penn State.
- 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 + 47.69) ÷ (45 + 15) = 3.19.
The division actually gives 3.1793; result cards print two decimals, so it appears as 3.17. 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 Penn State programmes use this scale?
The same grading plan applies across Penn State’s degree programmes, including Smeal College of Business, College of Engineering, College of Information Sciences and Technology and Meteorology. 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.
Penn State CGPA: frequently asked questions
Does Penn State use A+, C-, or D-?
What is Penn State's official grade-point scale?
What's the difference between Penn State's Semester and Cumulative GPA?
Why doesn't Penn State have a C- grade?
Does Penn State publish an official percentage cutoff for each grade?
Need every semester on one page?
The transcript generator turns your Penn State 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.
CalcScholar is not affiliated with or endorsed by The Pennsylvania State University. The Penn State 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 Penn State examination department is the authority.