Questions about the calculators and planner.

If you already have grades and want the quickest estimate, start with the UC GPA Calculator or CSU GPA Calculator. They require less setup and are the fastest way to get a UC- or CSU-specific number.

If you are still deciding what to take, comparing scenarios, or building a four-year schedule, start with the Course Planner. It is also normal to start with a calculator first and move to the planner later.

The GPA calculators are narrower tools. They are built to answer “What is my UC GPA?” or “What is my CSU GPA?” as quickly as possible.

The planner is broader. It helps you lay out courses by grade, track A-G progress, model future classes, and compare multiple GPA views in one place. It usually takes more input because it is solving a larger planning problem.

Both tools estimate admissions GPA, but the systems are not identical. UC allows more 10th-grade honors weighting than CSU.

CSU also double-counts college courses, and the CSU tool includes Cal Poly SLO mode, which brings 9th grade into the result.

First, check the School Course Directory in case the school is listed under a slightly different name, city, or district.

If it is still not there, use the manual school option inside the tool. That lets you keep working, but a manual school will not come with an imported official course list.

You can still use the tools. Add the school manually and then add the courses manually.

For honors treatment, be conservative until you can verify the course. Out-of-state or international high-school courses should not be assumed to follow California catalog rules automatically.

If the school is there but the specific course is missing, use the manual course flow instead of forcing a match.

Manual courses can still be graded, edited later, and used in the same planner and GPA workflows.

Add a manual school when the institution itself is missing from search, or when you need to model a college, transfer school, summer program, or out-of-state school.

Add a manual course when the school is already present and only one class is missing.

Transcript GPA is usually a school-specific number. It may include non-A-G classes, every grade level, plus and minus grades, and local weighting rules.

UC and CSU admissions GPAs are narrower. They only use certain course types and certain grade windows, so it is normal for the number here to differ from your transcript.

Cal Poly SLO uses a different grade window from the standard CSU view. It includes 9th through 11th grade coursework.

Ninth grade courses can change the result, but ninth grade honors courses do not get extra honors points. College courses still count double under CSU and SLO rules.

Add the college as its own school instead of mixing those classes into the high-school catalog.

In CSU and Cal Poly SLO mode, college semester grades count double. In UC, eligible UC-transferable college courses can still receive honors treatment when appropriate, but they are not doubled.

Use the summer rows or summer sections in the advanced tools instead of forcing summer coursework into a regular school-year slot.

For UC, Summer after 9th and Summer after 10th are treated with the 10th-grade period, while Summer after 11th is treated with the 11th-grade period.

Add each school separately instead of combining everything under one name.

The planner and advanced calculators support multiple schools, including transfer schools, summer programs, and colleges.