Graduation Year Calculator

This graduation year calculator works two ways. Pick the grade you or your child are in now and it counts the grades left: a high school graduation year is the year this school year ends plus 12 minus the grade. Or enter a birthday and your state's kindergarten cutoff, and it finds the fall kindergarten starts and adds 13 school years. Either way you get the class of year, the grade this school year, the school years left and an estimated college graduation year.

School years change on July 1 in this graduation calculator, the gap between one year's last day and the next year's first. The cutoff starts at September 1, the most common state date; change it to match your state, or mark a child who started kindergarten a year late or early.

class of = (start year of this school year) + 13 minus grade

The quickest way to calculate graduation year: find the grade in this table. Each class page shows the full timeline, ages and start dates for that year.

A birthday decides the class through the kindergarten cutoff: a child starts kindergarten in the fall they are 5 on or before the cutoff, and graduates 13 school years later. With September 1, the birthdays below make up each class. A child born on the cutoff day is the youngest in the class; a child born the next day is the oldest in the class after it.

Every state sets its own cutoff, and some leave it to districts. In the NCES State Education Reforms table of kindergarten entrance rules (2018 data), September 1 is the most common date: 18 states, including California, Texas and Florida, set a birthday on or by September 1, and 3 more (Arizona, New Mexico and West Virginia) say before September 1. The dates run from July 31 (Hawaii and Nebraska) to October 15 (Maine), and Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania left the date to each district. States change their rules from time to time; the Education Commission of the States 50-State Comparison of K-3 policies (September 2026) tracks the current ones, and your district's enrollment page has the final word.

The cutoff only matters for fall birthdays. A child born October 10, 2020 is the class of 2039 with a September 1 cutoff but the class of 2038 with October 15. Pick your state's date under Change and the graduation year updates. Sources checked October 23, 2026.

Most US high schools hold graduation in May or June, after the last week of classes. Districts that start in early August often finish in late May; districts that start after Labor Day usually graduate in June. The exact graduation date comes from your district's school calendar, which is normally posted a year or more ahead, so this graduating year calculator gives the year and the usual months rather than a day.

A full time bachelor's degree takes about four years, so the college class is the high school class plus 4: the class of 2030 in high school is the college class of 2034. Choose a college year as the current grade to work back from college. Credits, a change of major, transfers and part time terms shift the date; to track the grades that get you there, use the college GPA calculator.