August 24, 2026 · 4 min read

I built a grade tracker. Not the kind that calculates your GPA once at the end of the semester. Those already exist, and they never helped me. I built one that tracks your GPA as the semester goes, so you know where you stand before it's too late to change anything.

Here's why I made it, and the specific problem it's solving.

The moment I realised a one-time calculator wasn't enough

Every semester, I'd do the same thing in finals week: open a GPA calculator, type in my grades, and find out what my GPA was, right when it was too late to do anything about it. The number was already decided. I'd spent three months not knowing, then one anxious evening finding out.

The calculators were fine. The timing was the problem. What I actually needed wasn't a better formula, it was a running total I could check in week two and week six and week ten, not just in week sixteen.

What a tracker gives you that a calculator doesn't

The thing that finally changed how I study is being able to answer two questions any time I want:

• Where am I right now? The running GPA across all my courses, weighted by credit, updated the moment I enter a new score.
• What happens if...? If I drag this assignment from a 75 to an 85, does my GPA actually move? Or if I get a 60 on the final, what happens?

That second question turned out to be the useful one. Most of the time the answer was "less than I feared," and I could relax and study normally. Occasionally it was "this won't move the needle, focus on a different course." Both are more useful than a single GPA number dumped on you at the end.

How it works, briefly

You add each course with its credit hours, then break the course into its components (assignments, midterm, final), each with a weight from the syllabus. Enter the scores you have so far. It keeps the weighted average running and shows your cumulative GPA as it changes.

The part I use most is the What-If: pick any score, drag it up or down, and the GPA updates live. It answers "what do I need on the final?" in about five seconds, which is the question I used to spend an anxious evening on.

Everything saves in my browser, so the numbers are still there next week. No account, nothing uploaded anywhere.

If you've ever finished a semester and been surprised by your GPA, good or bad, a tracker would've told you that surprise in week six instead. That's the whole idea.