What a B+ actually means - letter grades, percents, and GPA points

"What's a B+ in GPA points" sounds like it should have one universal answer, and it mostly does - most US schools use 3.3 for a B+ on a standard 4.0 scale. What's less consistent is where the percentage cutoffs actually sit: some schools put a B+ at 87-89%, others at 88-91%, and a few compress the whole scale differently for STEM courses specifically. The grade-to-GPA converter uses the most common convention (A/A+ = 4.0, A- = 3.7, B+ = 3.3, down to F = 0.0) as a fast reference, with the caveat that your specific school's registrar page is the actual source of truth if a decision depends on it.

Where this actually matters

Nobody looks this up out of curiosity. It usually comes up in one of three moments: checking whether a specific percentage on a test converts to the letter grade you expected, converting an old transcript to a new school's scale during a transfer, or sanity-checking a weighted-category grade calculation that spit out a percentage you now need to translate into a letter for your own tracking. All three are "quick lookup," not "run a spreadsheet," which is why this is built as a converter rather than a full course calculator.

How it's different from the other calculators here

This tool converts a single grade; it doesn't average multiple courses. For that, the GPA calculator computes both weighted and unweighted GPA across a full course list, and if you're pre-med, the Pre-Med GPA & BCPM calculator does the same with AMCAS's science-GPA split included - a distinction that matters a lot more than most students realize, covered in why GPA and MCAT score are scored separately.

Plus/minus grades and why they exist at all

Plus/minus grading exists to reward the difference between a low B and a high B without inflating either into the next full letter - a B+ is meant to signal "closer to an A than a plain B implies," which is exactly why it sits at 3.3 rather than being averaged in as a flat 3.0. Some schools skip plus/minus entirely and only grade in whole letters, which flattens that distinction on purpose - if your school does this, the standard conversion table won't apply and you should use your registrar's exact scale instead.

The honest caveat

Colleges recalculate every applicant onto their own scale during admissions anyway, so a converted GPA from a tool like this - or any GPA calculator - is a planning number for tracking your own trend, not the number that will ultimately appear on an application. Treat it the same way you'd treat the final grade calculator's projection: directionally useful, not a guarantee.

If you're working from a broader GPA goal rather than a single grade, how to calculate the GPA you need this semester covers turning a target cumulative GPA into a concrete semester number.