Your CGPA — cumulative grade point average — is the running average that appears on most university transcripts and is used for honours classification, scholarships and postgraduate applications. This CGPA calculator combines your semester GPAs and credit hours into a single cumulative average.
Add each semester's GPA and total credits, and the calculator shows your running CGPA as you go, entirely in the browser.
Multiply each term's GPA by the credits taken that term, sum those totals, and divide by total credits across every term. A 3.6 across 16 credits contributes 57.6 points to a total that grows with each term completed.
Averaging your term GPAs directly gives the wrong answer whenever terms carry different credit loads, which they usually do. The gap is small in an evenly balanced programme and substantial in one with a light opening term and a heavy final-year project.
Each new term is a smaller share of a growing total. A weak result in your second term sits against perhaps 30 credits and moves the cumulative figure noticeably. The same result in your seventh sits against 130 credits and barely registers.
The corollary is uncomfortable but worth knowing early: recovery becomes proportionally harder. A strong final year cannot lift a settled cumulative figure very far, which is why students planning to apply for competitive postgraduate places are better served by consistency from the start than by a late surge.
Many systems translate a cumulative figure into a classification or honours level, and the boundaries are institution-specific. Some use the cumulative average directly; others weight later years more heavily, or discount the weakest module, or count only the final two years.
Because of that, your CGPA and your eventual classification can differ from what a straight average suggests. Read your institution's classification rules before assuming — particularly if you are near a boundary, where a discounting rule can be worth more than a whole term of effort.
Always state the scale alongside the number. "3.4" is meaningless without "out of 4.0", and admissions offices handle several scales at once — a bare figure invites the wrong assumption, sometimes in your favour and sometimes not.
Where an application asks for a percentage and you hold a GPA, use the conversion the receiving institution specifies. If none is given, report the GPA with its scale and let the credential evaluator do the conversion. An invented formula that flatters your record is the kind of thing that gets discovered at the transcript-verification stage.
GPA covers a single term; CGPA is the credit-weighted average across every term completed. Applications almost always ask for the cumulative figure.
Only if every term carried identical credits. Otherwise the average must be weighted by credit hours.
A great deal early on, when it is a large share of your total credits, and progressively less later — which also makes recovery harder.
Often, but the rules are institution-specific. Some weight later years more heavily or discount the weakest results, so check your regulations.
Use the formula the receiving institution specifies. If none is given, report the CGPA with its scale rather than inventing a conversion.