How UGA calculates your GPA

Pick the one that matches where you are. If you’re applying as a first-year, you want the recalculated core GPA. If you’re applying as a transfer, you want the transfer GPA. If you’re already enrolled, you want the UGA GPA on your transcript. I take them in that order below, with the arithmetic written out for each, and the calculator comes first so you can try your own grades.

GPA calculator

Choose a mode, replace the example rows with your own grades, and the estimate updates as you type. It opens with a made-up student so you can see the arithmetic before you change anything.

The freshman admissions GPA

UGA does not use the GPA printed on your transcript. Admissions recalculates one for every first-year applicant, and the rules are short.

• Which courses. Only academic courses in five core areas: math, science, English, social science and foreign language. AP Art and Music Theory are included. Electives are out, and so are courses like debate, journalism, yearbook, business math, computer science and health. Middle school courses don’t count even when they appear on your high school transcript.
• Which scale. Each grade becomes a standard 4.0 value using your school’s own grading scale at the time you took the course.
• Plus and minus. UGA treats them as the base letter. B+ and B- are both a B, and A- is an A.
• Weight. UGA adds the equivalent of one letter grade to each grade earned in an AP or IB course, unless your school already added weight. An A in an AP class is worth 5.0. UGA adds no weight for honors or dual enrollment, because those courses have no standard design. They still count when UGA judges how rigorous your schedule was.
• How grades combine. UGA adds up the points for every grade and divides by the number of grades. It does not weight by credit. A semester grade is one grade, so a year of two semester grades counts twice. If your school mixes term lengths, UGA says to count each half-credit course once and each full-credit course twice.
• Grades left out. W, P and S can’t be used in a GPA calculation, so they don’t count either way.

On the Common App you enter your unweighted grades and don’t adjust for weighting. UGA knows each school’s policy and has a process so that it doesn’t add AP or IB weight a second time. For the ranges admitted students land in and what else the file readers look at, see the UGA admission requirements guide.

Worked example: a high school core GPA

This is the student the calculator opens with. Eight core grades, two AP courses, one honors course and one dual enrollment course.

The points add up to 30.0 across eight grades. Thirty divided by eight is 3.75. Without the AP weight the same grades come to 28.0 points, or 3.50, so the two AP courses are worth 0.25. The honors course and the dual enrollment course moved nothing. The C+ and the A- were read as C and A.

The transfer GPA

Transfer admissions looks at a different set of grades, and it ignores your high school record. UGA says high school grades and SAT or ACT results are not considered for transfer admission, although the Terry College of Business has its own testing requirements.

• Which courses. All academic grades earned in transferable courses, from every college you have attended. That includes D, F and WF grades. Only transfer work with a specific course title, course number and credit hours is reviewed.
• Dual enrollment. UGA requires official transcripts from every college you attended, dual enrollment included, so those grades are in the pool.
• Repeats. If you repeat a course, both grades are used. A retake does not replace the first attempt.
• Plus and minus. Unlike the freshman calculation, the transfer GPA uses them. UGA says it translates plus and minus work into UGA’s grade scale, so the calculator uses that scale.
• AP and IB. Test credit counts toward your transferable hours only if your college transcript shows it as AP or IB, with a course designation and credit hours. UGA does not accept CLEP credit at all. Credit by exam carries no letter grade, so it has no row in the calculator.

For the Athens campus, the minimum levels for consideration are 30 to 59 transferable hours with a 3.30 transfer GPA, or 60 or more hours with a 3.00, both measured at the application deadline. Admission is on a space-available basis, and no GPA or hour count guarantees it. Transferring to UGA with your GPA goes through what those thresholds look like in practice.

Worked example: a transfer GPA

Here is the student the calculator shows in college mode. Grade points are credit hours times the points for the grade. This student took General Chemistry I twice.

That is 20 hours and 58.0 grade points, and 58.0 divided by 20 is 2.90. Both chemistry attempts are in. Without the D, the same transcript would be 54.0 points over 16 hours, or 3.375. A W would be left out entirely. A WF would go in as an F.

UGA doesn’t publish a separate arithmetic for the transfer GPA beyond the rules above. The calculator uses the same hours-times-points method the registrar uses for the GPA you carry once you enroll, which is the most reasonable stand-in, but treat the result as an estimate.

Your GPA once you’re enrolled

The registrar’s grade scale is the one the college mode uses. There is no D+ or D-.

Each letter-graded course earns grade points equal to its credit hours times the points for the grade. A semester GPA is all the grade points from the semester divided by the credit hours attempted for a letter grade. W, I, S, U, V, K, NR, NG and WM marks are left out, and that includes K, the mark UGA gives for credit by exam such as AP and IB.

UGA keeps two running averages. The cumulative GPA uses only hours attempted in residence at UGA, and it is the one used for probation and suspension. The overall GPA adds the grades and hours from other colleges. UGA truncates both to two decimal places, so it cuts the number off instead of rounding it. A 2.00 cumulative GPA is the minimum to graduate.

A semester example:

That is 14 hours and 44.2 grade points. 44.2 divided by 14 is 3.1571, so UGA would report 3.15. Rounding would give 3.16, which is not what appears on your record. If you’re on the edge of a threshold, that hundredth matters. The academic probation guide covers what the 2.00 line does to a semester.

HOPE and Zell Miller use their own calculation, with their own list of excluded grades and a boost for some STEM courses, so none of the three numbers above will match it. The HOPE and Zell Miller GPA guide has those rules.