Your current grade is not your final grade
An empty box and a recorded zero mean different things. Understanding that difference makes target planning much more useful.
A gradebook often normalizes your score over the work that has been marked. If you score 80% in a category worth 20% of the course, your current average can be 80% even though you have earned only 16 percentage points toward the full course.
Leave genuinely ungraded work blank. Enter a zero when the course has recorded a zero. Counting every future assessment as zero makes an in-progress grade look artificially low. Ignoring a recorded zero makes it too high.
Use syllabus weights to establish what is still outstanding. A required remaining average describes the weighted result you need across that work. It does not mean every remaining assignment needs an identical mark.
Try this with your own course
- Write down marked work and its course weight in one column. Keep future work in a separate column.
- Compare the normalized current average with the points already contributed to the full course.
- Use the remaining weight to calculate a target; do not read the current average as a completed result.
Before relying on the answer
Use your syllabus, timetable or transcript for the inputs. The calculator checks the arithmetic under those inputs; your institution decides the official result. Save a scenario as a plan rather than treating it as a confirmed mark.
Published by GradeOnward · Updated 19 October 2026 · Editorial approach · Suggest a correction