How this is worked out
Canada has no national grading scale. Provinces do not set one, and universities publish their own — which means the same percentage can be a different letter and a different grade point depending on where you study.
Two published scales are on this page and the gap between them is not trivial:
76% is a B at the University of Toronto — 3.0 grade points — and a B+ at UBC. B+ starts at 77 in Toronto and at 76 in Vancouver. Toronto has a D− and UBC does not; UBC has a C− and Toronto has one too, at a different boundary.
Toronto also gives A+ and A the same 4.0 — there is no 4.3 there, which surprises students transferring from institutions that have one.
The arithmetic itself is the standard credit-weighted average — each course's grade points times its credit value, summed and divided by total credits:
GPA = Σ(grade points × credits) ÷ Σ(credits)
Most Canadian universities count a one-term course as 0.5 credits and a full-year course as 1.0, which is why the credit figures here look smaller than American credit-hour numbers for the same workload.
A worked example
- Scale
- University of Toronto — 4.0
- Course 1
- A− — 1.0 credit — 3.70 points
- Course 2
- B+ — 1.0 credit — 3.30 points
- Course 3
- A — 0.5 credit — 2.00 points
- Course 4
- B — 0.5 credit — 1.50 points
- Total credits
- 3.0
- Total grade points
- 10.50
- GPA
- 3.50
- The same courses on the UBC scale
- identical here — the scales diverge at the percentage boundaries, not at the letters
- To reach 3.60 with 2.0 credits left
- an average of 3.75 on the rest
Percentage or letter — and why it matters which you enter
UBC records the percentage; the letter is descriptive. Toronto records the letter and publishes the percentage bands that produce it. If you enter a percentage here, the tool converts it using the bands of the scale you selected — and the two scales will not always agree.
A 76 illustrates it: a B at Toronto, a B+ at UBC. Over a full degree that kind of boundary difference compounds into a visibly different GPA for identical work.
If your institution is neither of these, its academic calendar will publish its own bands. Entering letters rather than percentages avoids the band question entirely, provided the letter-to-point mapping matches.
Credits are half-weights, and full-year courses are whole ones
The Canadian convention is that a single-term course carries 0.5 credits and a full-year course 1.0. A typical full course load is 5.0 credits a year, which is why Canadian credit numbers look small next to American credit hours for the same amount of work.
The weighting works exactly as it does elsewhere: a full-year course moves your average twice as far as a half-year one. Where the two differ is only in the numbers, not in the arithmetic.
Some programmes use different weights for labs, practica or thesis work. Enter whatever your transcript shows rather than assuming the standard.
Sessional, annual, cumulative and program GPAs
Most Canadian universities compute several averages and use them for different things. A sessional GPA covers one term, an annual GPA a year, a cumulative GPA everything, and a program or major GPA only the courses in your discipline.
Which one is used for academic standing, for scholarship eligibility, for graduation honours and for graduate admissions is not the same in each case — and the differences between them can be substantial for anyone whose performance changed over a degree.
Graduate programmes very commonly look at the last two years or the final ten full-course equivalents rather than the cumulative figure, which is worth knowing if a weak first year is worrying you.
Transferring between institutions
Because scales differ, transfer credit is normally granted without a grade — the course counts toward your requirements but its grade does not enter the receiving institution's GPA. This is a consequence of exactly the divergence this page shows.
It cuts both ways: strong transfer grades do not lift your new GPA, and weak ones do not drag it down. Confirm the policy before assuming either, because a minority of institutions do import grades.
For graduate applications abroad, quote your GPA with the scale it is on — "3.50 on a 4.0 scale, University of Toronto" — rather than the number alone. A bare 3.50 is ambiguous across a border, and a 4.3-scale figure quoted as 4.0 reads as impossible.
Assumptions and sources
- Toronto
- University of Toronto, grading scales and notations. https://www.registrar.utoronto.ca/records-academics/transcripts/grading-scales-notations/
- UBC
- UBC Vancouver Academic Calendar, grading practices. https://vancouver.calendar.ubc.ca/campus-wide-policies-and-regulations/grading-practices/introduction
- No national scale
- Grading is set institutionally in Canada. The two scales above are published by two universities and disagree at nearly every boundary — 76% is a B at Toronto and a B+ at UBC. checked 2026-08
- Not covered
- Institutions other than the two above, 4.3-point scales, graduate-level scales with different fail thresholds, and program-versus-cumulative GPA distinctions.