CASPA Science GPA Calculator

CASPA Science GPA Formula: Quality Points ÷ Attempted Credits

CASPA converts every letter grade on your transcript to its own numeric value, multiplies that value by the credits you attempted, and divides the total by the credits. Your school’s own GPA is never carried over — it is recalculated from the raw grades, which is why the number CASPA reports rarely matches the one on your transcript.

The grade values are fixed. CASPA publishes them as a letter grade conversion chart, and this calculator uses it unchanged:

Three details in that chart change what you should expect from your own numbers. A+ and A are both worth 4.0 — it is the only step on the entire chart worth nothing, so a transcript full of A+ grades converts to exactly the same GPA as one full of plain A grades. If your school awards 4.33 for an A+, your CASPA GPA will come in below your school GPA and nothing is wrong.

Second, AB, BC and CD are real entries at 3.5, 2.5 and 1.5. They are not typos. Schools that award split grades — much of the Wisconsin system, and the Canadian number scale CASPA publishes — report them directly, and they sit between the minus and plus grades either side. Forcing an AB onto A− or B+ moves that course by 0.2 in one direction or the other.

Third, the chart is evenly spaced until the bottom, then falls off. Every step from A down to D− is either 0.20 or 0.30 — thirteen steps, seven of them 0.30 and six of them 0.20. The single step from D− to F is 0.70, more than double the largest step anywhere else on the chart and exactly 2⅓ times it. A D− is not “nearly failing” in GPA terms; it is worth more than twice the distance to an F than any other grade is to its neighbour.

Which Courses Count: CASPA Science, BCP and Non-Science

The grade chart is the easy half. The half that actually moves your science GPA is which courses you are allowed to put in it, and CASPA decides that by its own subject code — not your course title, not your school’s department. Six subject categories feed the Science GPA:

BCP is a subset of the science GPA, not a synonym for it. BCP covers the five hard-science categories only, so an Other Sciences course — geology, astronomy, dietetics, exercise science, engineering, dental hygiene, even a CPR or first aid course carrying credit — raises your science GPA while leaving your BCP GPA untouched. Programs that quote a BCP minimum are asking about the narrower number.

The trap that costs applicants most is the pair of subjects that look identical and land in opposite GPAs. CASPA’s published course subject list settles each one, and the results are not intuitive:

Developmental biology and biological psychology are filed under Behavioral Sciences; medical terminology is filed under English; biostatistics is filed under Mathematics. All three are Non-Science regardless of what the course is called or which department taught it. If you are unsure about a course, look it up in the subject list before you enter it here — guessing in the optimistic direction is how an applicant arrives at a science GPA a tenth of a point above the one CASPA will report.

How to Use the CASPA Science GPA Calculator

1. List only your science courses.

   Work down your transcripts and pull out the courses that fall in the six science categories above. Leave out maths, psychology, English and everything else — those belong to your non-science GPA.

2. Pick the grade exactly as it appears on the transcript.

   Use the letter your school printed, not the one you think it deserves. If your transcript shows AB, BC or CD, choose those; if it shows a withdrawal with penalty, choose F / E / WF.

3. Type the attempted credits.

   Attempted, not earned — a failed course still carries its credits into the divisor. If your school reports quarter hours, convert first: one quarter hour is 0.667 semester hours.

4. Add every repeat as its own row.

   Both the first attempt and the retake go in, each with its own grade and credits. Do not delete the original.

5. Read the science GPA and the credit total.

   The panel also shows total quality points and how many courses were counted, so you can check nothing was dropped. A row with a grade but no credits is ignored.

Worked Examples: Repeats, Split Grades and Credit Weight

The official example. CASPA publishes a worked calculation of its own: an A over 4 credits, a B over 3, a C over 4, a D over 3 and an F over 3. That is 16 + 9 + 8 + 3 + 0 = 36 quality points across 17 attempted credits, and 36 ÷ 17 = 2.12. Entering those five rows here returns 17 credits, 36 quality points and a GPA of 2.12 — the same figures CASPA prints.

A repeat does not replace anything. CASPA does not recognise a school’s forgiveness, academic renewal or grade replacement policy; every attempt is factored in. Fail a 4-credit science course and retake it for an A, and the calculator counts 8 attempted credits and 16 quality points — a GPA of exactly 2.00 for that pair, not 4.00. The retake averages against the failure; it cannot erase it.

What that failure actually costs. Because the F stays in the divisor forever, recovery is measured in credits, not semesters. Starting from a single 4-credit F, you need 12 credits of straight A to pull the science GPA to 3.00, and 28 credits of straight A to reach 3.50 — roughly nine or ten more science courses without a single blemish. Twenty-seven credits is not enough.

Split grades change the answer. Take a 4-credit AB inside a 40-credit science load that is otherwise straight B. The correct science GPA is 3.05. Enter that AB as an A− and you get 3.07; enter it as a B+ and you get 3.03. The two wrong answers straddle the right one 0.04 apart on a single course — and on a transcript where every science grade is a split grade, an all-AB load is exactly 3.50 while reading it as all-A− reports 3.70, a fifth of a grade point that does not exist.

Transcript Traps: Percentages, Quarter Hours and Non-Graded Credit

Percentage transcripts lose every plus and minus. If your transcript reports percentages rather than letters, CASPA’s US conversion is a flat five-band table: 90–100 is an A, 80–89 a B, 70–79 a C, 60–69 a D and 59 or below an F. There is no plus or minus anywhere in it, so an 89% and an 80% both become a B worth 3.0. A student whose school would have written B+ loses 0.30 per credit purely to the reporting format.

The Canadian percentage chart is a different table entirely. It runs 90–100 A+, 80–89 A, 70–79 B, 60–69 C, 50–59 D. Sweeping every whole percentage from 50 to 100 through both charts, the Canadian one is worth exactly one full grade point more at all forty percentages below 90, and identical across all eleven from 90 to 100. An 85% is a B worth 3.0 on the US chart and an A worth 4.0 on the Canadian one. Use the chart that matches where the transcript was issued.

Quarter hours must be converted, and the error runs both ways. CASPA calculates in semester hours at a ratio of 1.0 quarter hour = 0.667 semester hours. If every course on your transcript is in quarter hours, converting changes nothing at all — a weighted average is indifferent to a constant scale factor, and the same five courses give 2.12 either way. It is a mix that distorts. A semester C over 4 credits beside an unconverted quarter A over 4 credits reads 3.00 when the true figure is 2.80; swap which course is the better grade and the same mistake understates by the same 0.20.

Non-graded credit is excluded entirely. Advanced Placement credit, College Board AP exam credit, pass/fail and pass/satisfactory courses carry no letter grade, so CASPA leaves them out of every GPA. A strong AP result clears a prerequisite but contributes nothing to your science GPA — and it removes a course you might otherwise have taken for an A. If you are working out an AP result first, the APUSH score calculator estimates the exam score; just do not expect it to appear here. The one non-letter outcome that does count is WF, a withdrawal with penalty, which CASPA factors in as an F.

What This Calculator Does Not Do

It does not classify your courses for you. You decide which rows are science; the calculator does the arithmetic on what you enter, which is why the subject table above matters more than the grade chart does. It also reports one number — your science GPA — rather than splitting BCP out separately, and it does not produce the year-by-year or school-by-school breakdowns CASPA generates during verification.

Nothing here is your official figure. CASPA recalculates from the transcripts your registrars send, and a discrepancy usually traces to a subject code you assigned differently, a repeat you left out, or quarter hours you did not convert. Treat the result as an estimate accurate to the inputs you gave it, and expect the official number to differ if any of those three applies. If you are working out what letter a raw classroom mark becomes before it ever reaches a transcript, the curve grade calculator covers that step; CASPA only ever sees the letter your school finally printed.

CASPA Science GPA Calculator: FAQ