Plus/Minus Grading Explained: How It Changes Your GPA
What the Grade Point Differences Are, Which Schools Use Them, and Why an A- Is Worth 0.3 Less Than an A

What plus/minus grading is

A traditional letter-grade system uses five symbols — A, B, C, D, and F — to represent academic performance across a wide range. An A covers everything from a student who scored 90% to one who scored 99%. A B covers 80% to 89%. The letter conveys direction (above average, average, below average) but not precision within that band.

Plus/minus grading adds subdivisions to each letter grade to capture finer distinctions in performance. Instead of five categories, the system typically has thirteen: A, A-, B+, B, B-, C+, C, C-, D+, D, D-, and F. (A+ is sometimes added, though it is handled differently from the rest — more on that below.) Each subdivision has its own grade point value, allowing the GPA calculation to distinguish between a student who scored 91% and one who scored 97% in the same course.

The motivating logic is that a single-letter system compresses performance differences that should matter. A student earning 89% and a student earning 80% both receive a B in a straight-letter system. In a plus/minus system, the 89% earns a B+ (3.3 grade points) while the 80% earns a B- (2.7 grade points) — a difference of 0.6 grade points per course. Proponents argue this more accurately reflects the academic record; critics argue it introduces precision without real-world meaning and creates anxiety around small mark differences.

The practical consequence is substantial: the same underlying performance produces different GPAs depending on whether the institution uses plus/minus grading. A student earning 93% (A- in most plus/minus systems, A in straight-letter systems) ends up with either a 3.7 or a 4.0 in that course depending on which school they attend. Multiply that across a full degree, and the difference becomes a permanent feature of the academic record that follows the student through graduate school applications, employment, and professional licensing.

The complete grade point scale: plus/minus vs. straight-letter

The table below shows the full grade point values under both systems. In the plus/minus column, each subdivision carries its own value. In the straight-letter column, all marks within a letter grade earn the same grade points.

The percentage cutoffs shown are common but not universal — individual institutions set their own boundaries. Some schools set A- at 90–93%, others at 90–92%, and the exact cutoff is always the institution's published policy. For the definitive values at your school, check the academic catalog or registrar's grading scale page.

Note that the D- (0.7) value is specific to plus/minus systems. At straight-letter schools, all D grades earn 1.0, making D- functionally identical to D in GPA terms. At plus/minus schools, D- contributes notably less to cumulative GPA — a pattern that matters for students on the edge of the 2.0 academic good standing minimum.

How GPA is calculated under plus/minus grading

The GPA calculation works identically whether or not a school uses plus/minus grading. For each course, the grade point value is multiplied by the number of credit hours. The products are summed across all courses and divided by the total credit hours. The result is the semester GPA (for one semester) or cumulative GPA (for all completed courses).

The difference between plus/minus and straight-letter grading lies entirely in the grade point values assigned in step one. In a straight-letter system, that A- earns 4.0 grade points instead of 3.7, producing 12.0 quality points instead of 11.1 for a 3-credit course. That 0.9 quality point difference per course accumulates over the full degree.

Worked example: one semester, two grading systems

Consider a student taking five 3-credit courses in one semester and earning the following grades:

Plus/minus GPA: 52.2 ÷ 15 = 3.48
Straight-letter GPA: 54.0 ÷ 15 = 3.60

The same set of course marks produces a 3.48 at a plus/minus school and a 3.60 at a straight-letter school — a 0.12 GPA difference from one semester. The courses where the student earned A- or B- hurt more under plus/minus grading; the B+ course actually helped more under plus/minus because it earned 3.3 instead of 3.0. The net effect of this particular grade mix slightly favors the straight-letter system, but that is not always the case — it depends on the specific pattern of plus and minus grades a student receives.

Which schools use plus/minus grading

Plus/minus grading is the majority practice at U.S. four-year colleges and universities, but it is far from universal. No national standard exists — each institution sets its own grading policy independently, and policies have evolved differently at different schools based on institutional culture, faculty governance decisions, and academic tradition.

Large public universities

Most flagship state universities use plus/minus grading. The University of Michigan, University of Texas at Austin, Penn State, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Ohio State, and UC Berkeley all use plus/minus systems. The University of California system broadly uses plus/minus grading, though individual campuses may have departmental variations for specific programs.

Selective private universities

Many highly selective private institutions use plus/minus grading, but practices diverge at the top of the selectivity range. Harvard University uses plus/minus grades but with an important nuance: A+ carries no additional GPA credit (it equals 4.0). Stanford University uses a plus/minus system. MIT grades most courses A, B, C, D, and F but applies plus/minus in specific departments and programs. Yale University historically did not use plus/minus grading — it transitioned to a plus/minus system relatively recently after decades of straight-letter grading.

Institutions that do not use plus/minus

A meaningful number of well-known institutions still use straight-letter grading. Notre Dame, Rice University (for most courses), and several liberal arts colleges have used straight-letter systems or applied plus/minus unevenly across departments. Community colleges vary widely — some use full plus/minus systems, others use straight letters, and some use only letter grades on a smaller scale altogether. For any specific school, the only reliable source is the registrar's published grading policy.

Why the policy varies

Institutions without plus/minus grading often cite faculty concerns about grade anxiety and the marginal-mark obsession that can accompany fine-grained grading. When a student's entire academic strategy shifts toward chasing the 93% threshold to secure an A rather than A-, it can distort learning priorities. Other schools argue that plus/minus grading gives faculty a more expressive tool for accurately distinguishing student performance — a professor can genuinely signal the difference between excellent and exceptional work without inflating the top of the scale.

Institutional switches in either direction are uncommon but do happen. Yale's adoption of plus/minus grading after decades of straight-letter grading generated significant faculty and student debate — the concern being that students whose prior straight-letter GPAs were never adjusted would be compared against plus/minus-era students in ways that disadvantaged neither group consistently.

The A- effect: where GPA drops under plus/minus grading

The most significant practical consequence of plus/minus grading is that the A- (3.7) is substantially lower than the A (4.0) in GPA terms. This gap — 0.3 grade points per course — is larger than the gap between B+ (3.3) and B (3.0) or between B (3.0) and B- (2.7). It affects students who are performing well but not at the very top of the grading band.

Who feels the A- effect most

Students aiming for a 4.0 GPA feel the A- effect most acutely. A single A- in a 3-credit course lowers a previously 4.0 GPA as follows:

The larger implication is for students who consistently earn in the 90–92% range across most courses. At a plus/minus school, a consistent 91% performance produces a cumulative GPA in the 3.7 range. At a straight-letter school, that same performance earns a 4.0 (or very close to it). This is why GPA context — knowing the institution's grading system — matters when comparing GPAs across different schools.

The psychological dimension

The 0.3-point gap between A and A- is not merely mathematical — it produces a measurable shift in student effort allocation. Students close to a grade threshold often spend disproportionate time trying to move from a B+ to an A- or from an A- to an A because they understand the GPA consequences. Research on grading systems has noted that plus/minus grading can intensify performance pressure at the margins without necessarily improving learning outcomes in the content of the course. This is part of the ongoing institutional debate about whether the fine-grained precision is worth its side effects.

Where plus/minus grading helps students

The plus/minus system is not uniformly disadvantageous. It helps some students in ways that straight-letter grading obscures.

The B+ advantage

A student who consistently scores in the 87–89% range benefits from plus/minus grading. Under straight-letter grading, 87% earns a B (3.0) — the same as 80%. Under plus/minus, 87% earns a B+ (3.3), meaningfully higher. A student who earns B+ across a semester of 15 credits has a 3.3 GPA under plus/minus grading and a 3.0 GPA at a straight-letter school. That 0.3 difference can push cumulative GPA above the 3.0 threshold for graduate program eligibility, Dean's List criteria, or scholarship renewal requirements.

The C+ advantage

Similarly, a student earning 77–79% in a course gets a C+ (2.3) in a plus/minus system rather than a C (2.0). For students whose GPA is near the 2.0 good standing minimum, a C+ versus C distinction can be the difference between academic good standing and academic probation. The plus/minus system, in this case, provides more accurate discrimination that can benefit students performing above the midpoint of the C band.

Who benefits overall from plus/minus grading

Students whose grades cluster at the upper portion of each grade band (B+, A-) face a mixed picture: B+ helps them, A- hurts them. Students who consistently score in the middle of each band (A, B, C) face no meaningful difference between the two systems for those grades — the midband values (4.0, 3.0, 2.0) are identical. Students who score at the lower end of each band (B-, C-, D-) see those grades penalized under plus/minus relative to straight-letter systems.

Semester GPA worked examples: plus/minus in action

Example 1: The high-performing science student

A pre-med sophomore takes a 16-credit semester with the following grades:

Plus/minus GPA: 58.8 ÷ 16 = 3.675
Straight-letter GPA: 60.0 ÷ 16 = 3.75

The A- grades in Organic Chemistry and Statistics cost this student 0.075 GPA points per semester compared to the straight-letter equivalent. Over four years of similar performance, this compounds: a student who consistently earns A- in two courses and A in two courses per semester will have a significantly lower cumulative GPA at a plus/minus school than at a straight-letter school for the same underlying academic performance.

Example 2: The mixed-performance sophomore

Plus/minus GPA: 45.0 ÷ 15 = 3.00
Straight-letter GPA: 45.0 ÷ 15 = 3.00

In this case, the plus grades (B+ and C+) exactly offset the minus grades (B- and A-) and the straight B, producing an identical GPA under both systems. This happens when the number and weight of plus grades precisely balances the number and weight of minus grades — a coincidence that illustrates how the net impact of plus/minus grading on any given student depends entirely on their specific grade pattern. Students whose pluses outweigh their minuses benefit; those whose minuses outweigh their pluses are disadvantaged.

Impact on graduate school and scholarships

Graduate school minimum thresholds

Most graduate programs state a minimum GPA requirement — commonly 3.0, with competitive programs frequently admitting students well above 3.5. These thresholds are applied to the GPA as reported on the official transcript from the applicant's undergraduate institution. A 3.7 from a plus/minus school and a 3.7 from a straight-letter school are evaluated identically by the graduate program's stated minimum — both meet the threshold or neither does.

The more meaningful comparison is within the admitted applicant pool. If most competitive applicants to a given program come from plus/minus institutions, the median admitted GPA in that pool already reflects the plus/minus grading environment. Admissions readers at programs that receive large volumes of applications from both plus/minus and straight-letter schools develop familiarity with what a 3.8 from a large public university (plus/minus) means relative to a 3.8 from a small liberal arts college (possibly straight-letter).

Medical and law school AMCAS and LSAC

Medical school applications through AMCAS and law school applications through LSAC both recalculate applicant GPA from submitted transcripts using their own standardized conversion systems. AMCAS and LSAC apply a uniform grade point scale to all courses regardless of the originating institution's grading policy. This standardization means that an A- from a plus/minus school earns 3.7 in the AMCAS/LSAC recalculation, and an A from a straight-letter school (where the same underlying performance would have been graded differently) also earns whatever the recorded grade converts to under the standard scale. Students applying to medical or law school cannot benefit from the scale difference — the application service imposes a uniform system.

Merit scholarships

Scholarship eligibility thresholds are applied to the GPA as reported. A scholarship requiring 3.5 GPA requires 3.5 as shown on the transcript, without adjustment for whether the institution uses plus/minus grading. A student at a plus/minus school who just misses 3.5 because of A- grades that would have been 4.0 at a straight-letter school has no recourse — the threshold applies to the reported GPA. This is one context where the A- effect has concrete financial consequences beyond transcript appearance.

Transferring between plus/minus and straight-letter schools

Students who transfer from a straight-letter school to a plus/minus school (or vice versa) encounter a practical record-keeping issue. The receiving institution typically recalculates a transfer GPA using its own grading standards when evaluating transfer applications, but what appears on the cumulative transcript and how it is computed after enrollment varies by institution.

Transferring from straight-letter to plus/minus

A student who transfers from a straight-letter school to a plus/minus school brings a transcript where A means 4.0 and B means 3.0. Their prior A grades are not retroactively converted to A+/A/A- categories — they remain as recorded by the sending institution. New courses at the plus/minus institution are graded under the plus/minus system. The cumulative GPA after transfer reflects the mixed record: the straight-letter courses contribute their flat values, and the plus/minus courses contribute their subdivided values.

Transferring from plus/minus to straight-letter

The reverse transfer is simpler: a student who has A- and B+ grades at a plus/minus school moves to a straight-letter school where future courses will earn A (4.0) or B (3.0) without subdivisions. Their prior plus/minus grades remain on record as graded, contributing 3.7 and 3.3 values to the cumulative GPA. The new straight-letter grades contribute 4.0 or 3.0 values. The cumulative GPA is still computed correctly as a weighted average.

For international students and foreign credentials

International students whose home country uses percentage-based or descriptive grading systems face an additional conversion step. Foreign transcripts are typically evaluated by credential evaluation services (WES, ECE, NACES members) that apply standard U.S. grade equivalences to foreign grades. Whether the resulting U.S. equivalent is expressed as plus/minus or straight-letter depends on the evaluation service and the institutional standard they apply. See the guide on how to read a foreign transcript and estimate a US-equivalent GPA for a full treatment of this process.

The A+ question: does it count above 4.0?

A+ occupies a special position in plus/minus grading systems because institutions handle it in two distinctly different ways, and the choice has real GPA consequences.

A+ = 4.0 (the majority approach)

At most U.S. four-year colleges and universities, an A+ earns 4.0 grade points — the same as a plain A. The A+ appears on the transcript as an exceptional grade but contributes identically to the GPA calculation. A student who earns A+ in every course has a 4.0 GPA, not a 4.33 or any value above 4.0. This is the approach at Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and the large majority of U.S. institutions.

The rationale: 4.0 represents the highest possible academic achievement. A+ recognizes exceptional performance within that top tier, but the GPA scale is capped at 4.0 because that cap is what makes GPAs comparable across courses and institutions. Allowing A+ to push GPA above 4.0 would produce a non-standard GPA that recipients wouldn't know how to interpret without additional context.

A+ = 4.33 (the minority approach)

A minority of institutions — several Canadian universities (notably UBC) and a small number of U.S. schools and high schools — assign A+ a value of 4.33. This produces GPA values above 4.0 for students who earn multiple A+ grades. The full treatment of this system is in the guide on the 4.33 GPA scale and why some schools use it.

Schools that don't award A+ at all

Some institutions simply don't use the A+ grade. The top of their scale is A (4.0), and a student who scores 99% earns the same grade as a student who scores 93%. This avoids the ambiguity of whether A+ should be worth 4.0 or more, and effectively reduces the plus/minus system to: A, A-, B+, B, B-, C+, C, C-, D+, D, D-, F. Check your institution's academic catalog to determine whether A+ is an available grade and how it is valued.

For the GPA impact of individual grade values across a full course history, the cumulative GPA calculator computes GPAs accurately under both 4.0 and 4.33 scales. The GPA calculator handles single-semester calculations with any combination of plus/minus or straight-letter grades.

Strategic implications of plus/minus grading for students

Understanding how plus/minus grading affects GPA is not merely academic — it has concrete strategic implications for how students approach coursework, communicate their academic record, and plan for graduate school and employment.

The B+/A- decision point

At institutions using plus/minus grading, students who are performing near the boundary between letter grades face meaningful GPA implications depending on which side they fall. The gap between a B+ (3.3) and an A- (3.7) is 0.4 grade points — the same as the gap between a B (3.0) and a B+ (3.3). For a student who has 60 credit hours completed at a 3.5 GPA, earning a B+ versus an A- in a 3-credit course changes the semester GPA by roughly 0.07 points. Over a full semester of 15 credits, the cumulative effect of consistently being at B+ rather than A- is substantial. Students who are consistently near the top of the B range should consider what study strategies or professor relationship-building might help them reach A- consistently in courses where the work quality is close to the border.

Reporting GPA from plus/minus schools

When reporting GPA on graduate school applications, resumes, or employer applications, students from plus/minus grading institutions should always note the scale. A 3.7 GPA from an institution with plus/minus grading is an A- average — a different and more precise signal than a 3.7 from an institution that only uses straight letters (where the nearest grades would be B = 3.0 and A = 4.0, and a cumulative 3.7 would result from a very specific mix of As and Bs). The plus/minus GPA carries more information, which is a benefit for students who have performed consistently in the A- to A range.

Understanding your professor's grading scale

Different professors within the same institution may map percentage grades to letter grades differently. One professor might give A- for 90-92% and A for 93-100%; another might give A- for 89-92% and A for 93-100%. Even within a plus/minus institution, the specific course-level percentage thresholds that determine plus/minus grades are set by individual professors or departments, not typically by the institution as a whole. This means the grade boundary that separates an A- from an A in your chemistry class may be different from the boundary in your English class. Always read your syllabus carefully for the professor's specific percentage-to-grade mapping at the start of each semester.

GPA recovery at plus/minus institutions

At institutions using plus/minus grading, the mathematics of GPA recovery are the same as at any institution — the credit-weighted average formula applies. However, the fine granularity of the plus/minus scale gives students a more precise picture of what specific grade improvements they need.

The minimum grade to maintain your current GPA

If your current cumulative GPA is exactly 3.0 (a straight B average), you need to earn a 3.0 in every future course to maintain that average. At a plus/minus institution, this means any B (3.0) exactly maintains your GPA, a B+ (3.3) raises it slightly, and a B- (2.7) lowers it slightly. The fine granularity means that a semester with a mix of B+ and B- grades might produce exactly a 3.0 semester GPA — leaving the cumulative unchanged even though no individual course earned exactly a B.

Targeting specific recovery grades

A student at 2.7 GPA targeting 3.0 at a plus/minus institution can calculate precisely how many credit hours of what average grade they need. Suppose they have 60 credits completed at 2.7 (162 quality points) and 60 credits remaining. To reach 3.0: required quality points in remaining 60 credits = 3.0 × 120 − 162 = 360 − 162 = 198 quality points. Required average GPA in remaining credits = 198 / 60 = 3.30 = B+. This means the student needs a B+ average across the next 60 credits — achievable with a mix of As, A-s, and B+s — to reach the 3.0 threshold. The cumulative GPA calculator performs these recovery calculations automatically.

How grade forgiveness interacts with plus/minus

At institutions with grade forgiveness or grade replacement policies (where a retaken course's new grade replaces the old one in GPA calculations), the plus/minus detail of the new grade matters. If you retake a course where you earned a D+ (1.3) and earn a B- (2.7) on the retake, you gain 1.4 grade points per credit hour for that course. If instead you earn a B (3.0), you gain 1.7 grade points per credit hour. The plus/minus granularity means the exact grade on the retake has a specific, calculable GPA impact rather than just the letter-grade-level impact of a straight-letter system.

Plus/minus grading in international context

The plus/minus subdivision of letter grades is primarily a US and Canadian convention. Most other grading systems — the German 1.0-5.0 scale, the French 0-20 system, the UK percentage-to-classification system, the Indian 10-point CGPA — already incorporate fine-grained distinction through their numeric scales and do not use an analogous plus/minus layer. When international students encounter US plus/minus grading for the first time, several aspects tend to be unfamiliar.

Why A- feels strange to international students

Students from systems where letter grades have only one value (A, B, C, D, F without subdivisions) often experience plus/minus grading as unexpectedly granular. The emotional experience of receiving an A- instead of an A — despite having performed very well by any reasonable standard — can feel like a demotion. In absolute terms, an A- (3.7) is an excellent grade that places a student in the top tier of the plus/minus scale. For students comparing their performance to home-country peers, translating "A-" into the home-country equivalent helps calibrate expectations: an A- in a US plus/minus system would typically convert to a Very Good or equivalent top-tier descriptor in European, Asian, and other grading systems.

Using foreign grades for US graduate applications when you attended a plus/minus institution abroad

Some students have a mixed transcript — foreign undergraduate from a non-plus/minus system, US graduate coursework at a plus/minus institution. In these cases, the US GPA and the foreign transcript GPA are reported separately. WES and other credential evaluators convert the foreign portion to a US GPA for comparison, and the US institution's own GPA is reported directly. For more on reading and converting international transcripts, see the guide on how to read a foreign transcript and the overview of international GPA scales.

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