How to Calculate Your Grade

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This article was co-authored by Felipe Corredor. Felipe is a senior college admissions counselor at American College Counselors with over seven years of experience. He specializes in helping clients from around the world gain admission to America’s top universities through private one-on-one counseling. He helps guide clients through the entire college admissions process and perfect every aspect of their college application. Felipe earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago and recently earned an MBA. There are 11 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of all quoted facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 2,431,528 times.

Calculating a grade for a class is a very good skill. It lets you track your progress and lets you know if you need to work harder to get the grade you want. Read below to learn how to calculate your score, project your future score, or determine how well you need to score to raise your score to a certain level.

Grade calculation sheet

Calculator of the point system of grades

Weighted Score Calculator

Before calculating your grade, you will need to determine whether your teacher uses a point system or a weighted grading system. With the point system, everything you do in class will be worth a certain number of points. Look up the scores on your assignments or simply ask your teacher to determine if you have been so graded.[1]
Look at your syllabus, add the numbers listed on the completed assignments, or ask your teacher to determine the total number of points available. If you’re just trying to find out your grade at this point, just add up the points for the tasks you’ve completed so far. If you want to guess the grade you will finish the class with, you will need to ask your professor for the total number of points that can be earned in the class.[2]
Then add up all the points you earned on your assignments. You can get these numbers from the assignments themselves (if your teacher listed your score) or you can get them by asking your teacher for your scores.[3]
- If you’re trying to guess what grade you’ll end up with, you’ll need to guess how well you’ll do on future assignments to calculate your final grade. You can guess these numbers by choosing a number of points similar to the percentages you were getting, or you can choose a higher number of points (to see what would happen if you studied more) or a lower number of points (to see what would happen if you studied less).
Now take the total number of points you have earned and divide that number by the number of total points earned. You can use the points only for the assignments so far or you can use the number of points for the whole class. It depends on the information available to you and the reasons for calculating the rating.[4]
- An example of this equation would look like this: Sam completed ten tasks and one test. These tasks were worth a total of 200 points. Sam added up their scores and found that they earned 175 points. Sam calculates the grade (175/200=.87) to find a score of 87% for the class grade.

Your teacher may use a weighted grading system. This means that your work will still have points, but those points will be worth different amounts depending on the category it falls into.[5]
Common categories include homework, tests, quizzes, final exam, and participation.[6]
- Each category will be worth a certain percentage of your grade. To get a good score, you will need to score all or most of the points in each category. However, scoring less in a category that is only worth a small percentage of your grade will not affect your grade as much as if the category was worth a large percentage.
- For ease of calculation, we will assume that each category is worth a certain number of points equal to its percentage weight (For example, a category worth 20% will be worth 20 points). This should make the total number of “points” for the class equal to 100, which should make calculating your grade much easier.
- Different teachers will prioritize different things in their classroom, based on their teaching philosophy and what they believe is most important. For example, some teachers will weight the final exam the most, while others will weight participation the most.
Using the same method described above, determine your percentage points for each category. Think of it like calculating a grade, but only for homework or only for quizzes.[7]
- If you’re trying to figure out how you’ll do in the overall class, you’ll have to guess how well you’ll do on the work you haven’t completed.
Multiply that percentage by the number for the category to find out how many points you earned for that category.[8]
For example, if you earned a 95% in a category weighted at 20% (.95 x 20 = 19), you would earn 19 points for that category.[9]
Add up the numbers you get for each category to find your percentage for the class.[10]
This can then be compared to the chart below to find your letter grade.

To figure out how much you need to raise your grade through the point system, you’ll first need to decide what letter grade you want in the class as a whole and what the appropriate percentage is (you can use the table below).
- Then use this percentage to determine how many points, out of the total number of points available in the class, are needed to earn that percentage.
- Compare the number of points you have already earned with the number of points needed to get the desired grade. Compare that number with the number of points for the work you haven’t done yet. If the number of points available is less than the number of points needed to obtain that grade, you will not be able to achieve the grade you want without some form of extra credit.
Calculating what you’ll need to do to raise your weighted score is much more difficult, since there are so many different factors. The easiest way will be to ask your teacher for help and advice.[11]
- You’ll want to focus on performing better in categories that carry more weight. This will raise your score faster than focusing on the lower categories. However, if those less weighted categories are easy to raise (such as regular attendance to raise your participation grade), then you certainly shouldn’t ignore them.
Additional points for both grading systems will help you raise your grade. The more valuable the extra work, the more it will affect your grade. However, if your teacher uses weighted grades and puts extra points in a less weighted category, it will help less. Ask your teacher how extra credit counts before you take on too much.

Your teacher may use additional methods to determine your grade in the class. It is important to know which system your teacher or school uses before doing too many calculations. If your class will be graded using standards-based assessment, then the above methods should accurately predict your grade.
- Standard grading is a system where all your work can earn a certain number of points, and the number of points you earn directly results in your grade.[12]
Rank-based grading is a more complicated system adopted by some teachers and schools. In this system, all grades earned by all your classmates will be placed on a curve. Most students will receive an average score, while students who score higher or lower than the average group will receive correspondingly high or low scores. Where you place on the curve will then determine your final score, so it can complicate your calculations.
- For example, you can get an A (even if you only scored 85%) if all your classmates scored worse than you.
- This system can be used to determine your entire grade or just individual parts. Sometimes teachers will only apply it in the final exam, for example.

Make sure you add and divide correctly. If the score you arrived at seems very different from the score you got on individual tasks, or the number you got seems impossible or higher than 100% (not including extra points), recalculate. Thank you Helpful 13 Not helpful 4

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