Central University of Science and Technology (CUST) Grading System 2026: GPA & CGPA Guide

Quick answer: The Central University of Science & Technology (CUST), Dhaka, grades on the Bangladesh UGC uniform 4.00 scale: A+ (80% and above) is worth 4.00, A (75-79%) is 3.75, and the scale runs down through A- (3.50), B+ (3.25), B (3.00), B- (2.75), C+ (2.50), C (2.25) and D (2.00), with anything below 40% an F worth 0.00. Your semester GPA is the credit-weighted average of your grade points, and your CGPA is the credit-weighted average of your semester GPAs. The rules that surprise most CUST students are not in the table at all: you need only a CGPA of 2.20 to stay in good standing and to graduate (lower than the 2.50 many other Bangladeshi universities demand), grade improvement is capped at B (3.00) no matter how well you score in the improvement exam, you must attend 60% of classes in every course or you cannot sit its final exam, and more than 2 failed courses in a semester (or more than 4 in total) blocks your promotion. This guide is built on CUST’s own Academic Rules & Regulations, with worked examples whose arithmetic you can check line by line. Where CUST publishes no rule, this guide says so plainly instead of inventing one.

Check Your CUST GPA With the Calculator

The fastest way to check your numbers is the free calculator on this site. It runs on the exact UGC Bangladesh 4.00 scale that CUST follows, so the grade points match CUST’s official table value for value:

1. Open the CGPAPro GPA calculator on the homepage and select the “UGC Bangladesh” grading system.
2. For each course, type the course name, enter its credit hours, and choose the letter grade you earned (A+ = 4.00, A = 3.75, all the way down the table below).
3. The calculator multiplies each grade point by its credit hours, adds up the quality points, and divides by total credits. That is your semester GPA.
4. For your CGPA, repeat this for every semester and combine them using the credit-weighted CGPA formula in the worked examples below. Do not average your semester GPAs directly: that is the single most common calculation error, and it is wrong whenever your semesters carry different credit loads.

One caution about the calculator: CUST’s own rules do not state explicitly whether a failed (F) course’s credits stay in the GPA divisor. The generic calculator counts an F as 0.00 times its credits, which keeps the F in the divisor. That matches how most Bangladeshi universities treat an F, and it is the safe assumption for planning, but if your official result sheet ever disagrees with the calculator, the result sheet wins. The open question is flagged again in the F-grade section and in the UNVERIFIED box below.

What CUST Is

CUST is a private university in Mirpur, Dhaka. The Government of Bangladesh approved its establishment on 24 February 2016 under the Private University Act 2010, and it is listed by the University Grants Commission (UGC) of Bangladesh. Its campus is at Plot 1/9, Road 2, Block D, Section 15, Mirpur, Dhaka-1216. CUST describes itself as Bangladesh’s first industry-driven private technical university: it runs a Workplace Learning Center (WPLC) that puts students into industry settings from the first semester, and an Industry Linked Learning Center (ILLC) for structured industry engagement, with a formal final-year internship supervised by an industry professional whose assessment contributes to the academic grade. Its first convocation is scheduled for 21 December 2026, which tells you how young the institution still is.

CUST runs two semesters a year with unusual names worth learning, because every CUST document uses them. Swadhinata (Spring) runs from February to July, and Bijoy (Fall) runs from August to January. Each semester lasts about six months: 13-15 weeks of classes plus midterm, preparatory leave and final examination weeks, for 18-20 working weeks in total. The medium of instruction and examination is English.

The programmes named in CUST’s Academic Rules & Regulations are B.Sc. in Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), Mechanical Engineering (ME), Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EEE) and Civil Engineering (CE), plus the Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) and the Master of Business Administration (MBA). The CUST homepage also lists Artificial Intelligence and Data Science, Marketing, International Hospitality and Tourism Management, and English as “(Proposed)” programmes. Proposed means not yet running: do not plan an admission around them until CUST announces them as open.

Which CUST? Do Not Mix These Up

Search results for “CUST grading system” are a trap, and this section exists because the trap catches real students. There are at least four different institutions sharing pieces of this name:

• CUST Dhaka (this guide): Central University of Science & Technology, Mirpur, Dhaka, founded 2016, websites cust.edu.bd and cust.ac.bd. Bangladesh UGC scale: A+ 4.00 at 80%, A- 3.50, B+ 3.25.
• CUST Pakistan: Capital University of Science and Technology, Islamabad, cust.edu.pk, founded 1998. It follows Pakistan’s HEC scale, where A is 4.00, A- is 3.67 and B+ is 3.33. Its calculator pages dominate Google for “CUST CGPA calculator”, and every one of their grade points is wrong for a Dhaka CUST student. If the page you found mentions HEC, Islamabad, or a 3.67 for A-, close it: it is not your university.
• USTC: the University of Science & Technology Chittagong, in Chattogram, founded 13 May 1989 as the Institute of Applied Health Sciences and upgraded to a full university under the Private University Act 1992. It is older, medical- and engineering-focused, and in a different city. USTC is not CUST, and its regulations are not yours.
• CCNUST: CCN University of Science & Technology, Cumilla, another “University of Science and Technology” that search results surface. Again, a different institution.

The practical rule: when you search for anything about your university, write the full name plus “Dhaka” plus “Mirpur”. “CUST” alone will hand you Islamabad’s grading scale, and a student who plans around A- = 3.67 will miscalculate every semester.

The Official CUST Grading Table (2026)

This table is taken from section 8(6) of CUST’s own Academic Rules & Regulations. Your total marks in a course (out of 100) map to a letter grade, and each letter maps to a fixed grade point. There is no curve and no rounding across a boundary: 79% is an A (3.75), not an A+, and 74% is an A-, not an A.

D (2.00) is the minimum passing grade. Score 40% and you pass, barely, with earned credit. Score 39% and you fail outright, earn no credit, and must clear the course through the clearance or carryover system explained below.

Three details catch students out. First, there is no C- and no D+ on this scale: it jumps straight from C (2.25) to D (2.00), and from D straight to F (0.00). If a generic calculator offers you a “C- 1.75” or “D+ 1.33”, that is not CUST’s scale. Second, the bands are five points wide and the boundaries are strict, so a single mark can be worth 0.25 grade points on every credit of the course. Third, this table is identical to the UGC uniform scale used across Bangladeshi universities: the same bands and points appear in the published grading tables of Stamford University Bangladesh, the University of Creative Technology Chittagong, and Premier University Chittagong. That is why the homepage calculator’s UGC Bangladesh scale matches CUST exactly, and why your CUST grades translate cleanly if you transfer to another Bangladeshi university. The same UGC scale also appears in the MIST grading guide and the BAUET grading guide, though both of those institutions wrap the scale in very different rules.

Alongside the letter grades, CUST uses one non-grade mark that matters: W (Withdrawn). A course dropped after the late drop deadline but before the final drop deadline is recorded as W. It appears on your transcript but does not affect your CGPA. Courses dropped within the add/drop period do not appear on the transcript at all. And one hard rule: simply stopping attendance or telling your instructor does not count as dropping a course. If you do not formally drop it, it stays on your record and will appear as an F.

How Your Final Mark Is Built: Theory and Sessional Splits

Your percentage in a course is not decided by the final exam alone. For a theory course, CUST splits 100 marks like this:

Read that split carefully: 60% of your grade is decided before the final exam. The final is worth 40%, the midterm 30%, and attendance, assignments, quizzes and viva make up the other 30%. A student who “starts studying for finals” in the last weeks has already forfeited most of the course. One more detail: the number of quizzes is ordinarily (n + 1), where n is the credit hours of the course, and your best n quizzes count. A bad quiz day is survivable by design.

Sessional (lab and practical) courses split differently:

Sessional courses deserve extra respect for one reason explained below: fail a sessional and you repeat the whole semester, not just the course. The midterm of a theory course lasts 1 hour 30 minutes; the semester final, improvement, clearance and carryover exams last 2 hours.

CUST GPA Formula: The Step-by-Step Method

CUST’s regulations define GPA exactly the way the calculator above computes it. For each course, multiply its credit hours by the grade point you earned. Add up all those products. Add up all the credit hours. Divide the first total by the second.

Formula: GPA = Sum (Credit Hours x Grade Point) / Sum (Credit Hours)

Worked step by step:

1. Step 1 – Quality points per course: multiply the grade point by the course’s credit hours. A 3-credit course with an A (3.75) gives 3 x 3.75 = 11.25 quality points.
2. Step 2 – Total quality points: add up all the course quality points.
3. Step 3 – Total credits: add up the credit hours of the courses.
4. Step 4 – Divide: semester GPA = total quality points / total credits.

CGPA formula: CGPA = Sum (Semester GPA x Semester Credits) / Sum (Semester Credits). In other words, your CGPA is the credit-weighted average of all your semester GPAs, which is exactly the same as total quality points across every semester divided by total credits across every semester. Both give the same answer. The only wrong method is the plain average of semester GPAs, which ignores credit loads.

One more thing about credits: a theory course’s credit hours equal its contact hours per week, while a sessional course’s credit hours equal half its contact hours per week. That is why a lab that meets for 3 hours a week is typically worth 1.5 credits, not 3. Always enter the exact credit from your course outline into the calculator: a 1.5-credit lab and a 3-credit theory course are not equal, and the formula above is the only correct way to combine them.

Worked Example 1: CUST’s Own Example (GPA 3.52)

This is not a made-up example. It is the numerical example printed in CUST’s own Academic Rules & Regulations, reproduced here with every multiplication shown so you can check it against your own result sheet:

GPA = 42.25 / 12 = 3.5208, shown as 3.52. Notice that CUST’s own example prints 3.52, which implies results are shown to two decimal places, though the rules do not state a rounding rule explicitly. Treat two decimals as the convention and confirm against your own result sheet if a borderline value ever matters.

Worked Example 2: A First-Semester CSE Load (GPA 3.30)

Now a realistic first-semester CSE set, with the mixed credit loads real transcripts carry: 3-credit theory courses and 1.5-credit labs side by side.

GPA = 49.50 / 15 = 3.30 exactly. Two things to notice. First, the A+ in the 1.5-credit lab contributes only 6.00 points, while the B- in 3-credit English contributes 8.25: the weaker grade in the heavier course moves the total more than the perfect grade in the light one. Credit weighting is the whole game. Second, if you run these exact six rows through the homepage calculator on the UGC Bangladesh scale, you get 3.30, matching this hand calculation to the decimal. That is a useful self-check any semester: if the calculator and your hand maths disagree, one of your credit entries is wrong.

Worked Example 3: CGPA Across Three Semesters (3.41, Not 3.42)

Take the same student across three semesters with rising grades but uneven credit loads:

CGPA = 184.35 / 54 = 3.4139, shown as 3.41. The common mistake is to average the three semester GPAs directly: (3.20 + 3.45 + 3.60) / 3 = 3.4167, which rounds to 3.42. That is wrong, and here it is wrong by only 0.01 because the credit loads are similar. When one semester carries 21 credits and another 14, the simple average drifts further from the true CGPA. Always weight by credits. The same credit-weighted logic applies in the NEUB grading guide, where the worked CGPA example makes the same point with different numbers.

There is a second lesson hiding in this example: CGPA moves slowly once you have banked a lot of credits. After 54 credits at 3.41, one more 18-credit semester at a perfect 4.00 would move this student only to (184.35 + 72.00) / 72 = 3.56. Early semesters are where the CGPA is made. A weak first year is expensive to repair, and a strong first year is a cushion that lasts the whole degree.

Worked Example 4: The Improvement Cap in Numbers (3.13 to 3.29, and No Higher)

This is the section no generic calculator page covers, and it is the most practical arithmetic in this guide. CUST allows you to improve a grade lower than B, but the maximum grade an improvement exam can award is B (3.00). Even a perfect improvement paper cannot earn an A.

Take a semester of five courses:

GPA before improvement = 43.75 / 14 = 3.125, shown as 3.13.

Now the student improves Course 3 (the C) and scores brilliantly in the improvement exam. The cap applies anyway: the course becomes a B (3.00), contributing 3 x 3.00 = 9.00 instead of 6.75. New total = 43.75 – 6.75 + 9.00 = 46.00. GPA after improvement = 46.00 / 14 = 3.2857, shown as 3.29. The gain is 0.16, and no score in that exam could have produced a bigger one for this course. The strategic lesson: spend improvement attempts on your highest-credit sub-B courses first, because the recoverable points equal (3.00 minus your current grade point) times the course credits. A 3-credit C (2.25) improved to B recovers 2.25 points; a 1.5-credit C+ (2.50) improved to B recovers only 0.75. And remember the career caps: at most 4 improvement courses in a 4-year programme, at most 5 in a 5-year programme. Do not burn one on a 1-credit course when a 3-credit C is waiting.

The improvement exam itself covers 70% of the course marks; the remaining 30% comes from the continuous assessment you already earned when you attended the classes. You must apply for the improvement exam at least 4 days before its date, through the prescribed form from the Controller of Examinations. The old grade stays on the tabulation sheet and transcript for chronological sequence, but the improvement grade is the one that counts for your result and GPA.

GPA vs CGPA at CUST

GPA measures one semester. CGPA measures your whole degree so far. The formula is the same idea stretched across semesters, and CUST’s regulations use the word GPA for the semester figure and CGPA (Cumulative Grade Point Average) for the running total. A few distinctions that matter in practice:

• Semester GPA decides how a single Swadhinata or Bijoy semester went. It is the number on that semester’s result sheet.
• CGPA is what employers, scholarship committees and foreign universities ask for. It is the credit-weighted average of everything so far, not the average of your semester GPAs.
• SGPA is a term some Bangladeshi universities use for the semester figure. CUST’s own rules say GPA for the semester figure, so if a form asks for your SGPA, give your semester GPA: they are the same number under a different label.
• Your CGPA after one semester equals that semester’s GPA. The two numbers only separate from the second semester onward.

F Grades, Clearance, Carryover and Promotion: The Rules That End Degrees

An F is more than a zero on one course. Here is the full chain of consequences, all from CUST’s own rules:

• Clearance exam: held only for students who obtained an F in the regular exam of a course. Clearance, carryover and improvement exams run for 1-2 weeks at the end of the semester final examination period.
• Carryover exam: for clearing backlog courses from previous semesters, in a later semester. You apply on the prescribed form from the Controller of Examinations within the due time.
• Promotion limits: if you have more than 2 failed courses in a semester, or more than 4 failed courses in total including carryovers, you are not promoted to the next higher class. You must re-register for the failed courses and bring the counts back within the 4 and 2 limits before promotion. The same limits apply in your final year.
• Re-registration: if you are not promoted, you re-register for the failed courses in the subsequent semester. The new grade counts for that semester’s GPA; the old grade stays on the previous semester’s transcript for chronological sequence only.
• Sessional failure is harsher: a student who fails any sessional or practical course must repeat the semester. There is no quick clearance path for a failed lab comparable to a theory clearance exam, so a failed lab costs a full semester of time.
• Absence is an F: if you are absent from a midterm, final, clearance, improvement or carryover exam, you get an F for the course, with the missed exam counted as zero. A missed exam is not a postponement.
• The open question: CUST’s formula divides by “total credit hours completed” and says an F earns no credit, but the rules PDF does not explicitly state whether an F course’s credits stay in the GPA divisor. Compare BAUST, whose rules state the exclusion in so many words, and ASAUB, where the F stays in the calculation. Until CUST publishes the point explicitly, check your own result sheet: if your official GPA matches the calculator with the F included, the F stays in the divisor; if it matches with the F removed, it does not. Do not assume another university’s rule applies to you.

Attendance: The 60% Bar

You must attend 60% of the classes held in each course of a semester. Fall below 60% in a course and you are not allowed to sit the semester final, clearance, improvement or carryover examinations for that course. The university may condone a shortage on grounds acceptable to the authority, but condonation is discretionary, not automatic. Note also that attendance itself carries 10% of the marks in a theory course and 10% in a sessional course, so missing classes costs you twice: once in the attendance marks and once in the exam eligibility. And a new student who fails to attend regularly during the first three weeks of classes risks automatic cancellation of admission, with semester fees forfeited. CUST’s 60% bar is lower than the 75% some Bangladeshi universities demand, but the exam ban makes it just as sharp: a student barred from the final gets an F by absence, which then feeds the promotion limits above.

Probation, Graduation and the Dean’s List: The 2.20 Line and the 3.75 Line

CUST’s standing rules are built on two numbers:

• 2.20 is the line that matters most. A CGPA of 2.20 or above on the 4.00 scale counts as normal progress toward the degree. Fall below 2.20 and you are placed on academic probation: minimum one semester, usually one academic year, extendable semester by semester until your overall GPA reaches 2.20 again. A student on probation who fails to maintain at least 2.20 for two consecutive academic years may be suspended; the first suspension can be lifted after a full semester on the Head of Department’s satisfaction, but a second suspension is final and absolute.
• 2.20 is also the graduation floor. A minimum CGPA of 2.20 on the 4.00 scale is required for the award of the degree. This is lower than the 2.50 graduation line used by several other Bangladeshi private universities, and students transferring in from a 2.50 university sometimes assume the stricter line follows them. It does not: at CUST, 2.20 is the degree requirement. Equally, do not mistake 2.20 for a safe target. It is the floor, and sitting on the floor means one bad semester puts you on probation.
• 3.75 is the Dean’s List line. Graduating students with a CGPA of 3.75 or above are included in the Dean’s List of Honor. That is an A average across the whole degree, and it is the number to aim at if you want your transcript to open doors.

Degree Timelines: The Clocks You Cannot See

CUST sets maximum completion periods, and missing them can end your enrolment:

• 4-year degree programmes: complete everything within 14 semesters.
• 5-year degree programmes: within 16 semesters.
• 2-year graduate programmes: within 8 semesters.

Because CUST runs two semesters a year, 14 semesters is seven calendar years for a four-year degree: generous, but not infinite. Every repeated semester, every re-registration and every semester drop consumes that clock. Related tripwires: semester withdrawal is not allowed for first-year first-semester students; other students may withdraw registration within 12 working days of classes starting and return within one year on payment of only the readmission fee; and students who simply stop attending without withdrawing in time get an F in every theory and sessional course of the semester, and must take readmission within two succeeding semesters on payment of a 15,000 taka fine plus regular semester fees. That withdrawal-and-readmission facility can be used only once during the study period.

UNVERIFIED: What CUST Does Not Publish (Read Before You Rely on This Guide)

The following items could not be verified from CUST’s own published documents as of 1 November 2026. They are listed here, not hidden, so you can confirm them with the Registrar before making a decision that depends on them. Registrar and admissions contact, from the CUST site footer: enquiries@cust.ac.bd, +8801781331600 (Admissions), +880 1347-535501 (Enquiries), Plot 1/9, Road 2, Block D, Section 15, Mirpur, Dhaka-1216.

• Per-programme total credit requirements. The rules give maximum semesters, not credit totals. The total credits for B.Sc. in CSE, BBA or any other programme are not stated in the documents fetched. Do not quote a credit total for your programme from a generic site.
• Whether an F course’s credits stay in the GPA divisor. The rules do not say explicitly. Check your result sheet against both readings, as explained in the F-grade section.
• The rounding rule. CUST’s own example prints 3.52, implying two decimals, but no rounding rule is stated. If a borderline value decides probation or the Dean’s List, confirm how your department rounds.
• Scholarship and tuition-waiver CGPA tiers. No waiver or scholarship CGPA table was found on the CUST pages fetched. Do not assume the tiers published by other universities apply at CUST.
• A CUST class-division table. CUST does not publish its own First/Second/Third class table in the documents fetched. The widely used Bangladesh convention is 3.00 and above for First Class, 2.25-2.99 for Second Class, below 2.25 for Third Class. That is the national convention, not a CUST-published rule: confirm with your department before writing a class on a CV.
• Clearance, carryover and improvement exam fees. The rules confirm these exams exist and set application deadlines, but publish no fee amounts.
• Typical per-semester credit loads. The worked examples in this guide use illustrative loads (12-19 credits). Your actual load comes from your programme curriculum, not from this article.
• Dean’s List benefits beyond the listing. The rules state the 3.75 threshold and the honour; they do not promise a certificate, ceremony or fee benefit.

Common Mistakes CUST Students Make

1. Using Pakistan CUST’s grade points. A- 3.67 and B+ 3.33 belong to Islamabad’s HEC scale, not to Dhaka CUST. Your A- is 3.50 and your B+ is 3.25. Every semester calculated on the wrong scale is wrong by design.
2. Averaging semester GPAs instead of weighting by credits. (3.20 + 3.45 + 3.60) / 3 = 3.42 is not your CGPA when the semesters carry 18, 19 and 17 credits. The true CGPA is 3.41. Small error here, large error with uneven loads.
3. Assuming improvement can earn an A. It cannot. The cap is B (3.00), however well you score. Plan improvement attempts around the cap, not around hope.
4. Treating the final exam as the whole course. The final is 40% of a theory course. The midterm is 30% and attendance, assignments, quizzes and viva are 30%. A student who starts in the final weeks has already forfeited 60% of the marks.
5. Assuming “not attending” equals “dropped”. It does not. If you do not formally drop a course, it stays on your record and becomes an F, which feeds the 2-per-semester and 4-total promotion limits.
6. Assuming the graduation line is 2.50. At several other Bangladeshi universities it is. At CUST it is 2.20. Planning to the wrong line in either direction wastes effort or risks probation.
7. Ignoring the 60% attendance bar until it is too late. Below 60% in a course, you cannot sit its final at all, and absence from the final is an F by rule.
8. Trusting a generic calculator’s F handling. Some universities exclude failed courses from the GPA entirely; CUST’s rules do not say so explicitly. Verify against your result sheet before trusting any calculator output that includes an F.
9. Failing a sessional casually. A failed theory course gets a clearance exam. A failed sessional means repeating the semester. Labs deserve the same seriousness as theory courses, not less.
10. Searching “CUST” without “Dhaka” and “Mirpur”. You will land on Islamabad, Chittagong, Cumilla, or a Chinese university of the same initials. Always add the city.

Tips to Raise Your CUST CGPA

• Bank the 60% before the final. Attendance (10%), assignments (5%), quizzes (10%), midterm (30%) and viva (5%) are the most predictable marks in the split. Treat them as guaranteed points, not optional extras, and remember the best-n quiz rule forgives one bad quiz.
• Rank improvement attempts by recoverable points. Recoverable points = (3.00 minus your current grade point) x credit hours. A 3-credit C recovers 2.25 points; a 1.5-credit C+ recovers 0.75. Spend your 4 (or 5) lifetime improvement attempts on the biggest numbers first.
• Protect the 60% attendance line in every course, every semester. It is the cheapest GPA insurance you have, because the penalty for crossing it is not a few marks but an exam ban and an F.
• Put your effort where the credits are. A grade in a 3-credit theory course moves your GPA twice as far as the same grade in a 1.5-credit lab. When time is short, study the heavy course first.
• Watch the 5-point band boundaries. A 74% (A-, 3.50) versus a 75% (A, 3.75) is a quarter-point swing on every credit of that course. If you are near a boundary before the final, calculate exactly how many final-exam marks you need to cross it: with the final worth 40%, each final-exam mark is worth 0.4 course marks.
• Guard the 2.20 line early. Probation is recoverable, but two consecutive academic years below 2.20 can mean suspension, and a second suspension is final. If your CGPA is drifting toward 2.20, fix it in the current semester, not the next one.
• Clear F grades immediately. The clearance and carryover windows are short (1-2 weeks after the finals), and the 2-per-semester and 4-total failed-course limits block promotion. A backlog left to grow is a promotion problem, not just a grade problem.
• Use the calculator as a check, not as gospel. Run your result sheet through the homepage calculator each semester. If the two disagree, the disagreement itself is information: check your credits first, then the F handling, then ask the Controller of Examinations.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the grading system at CUST Dhaka?

CUST Dhaka uses the Bangladesh UGC uniform 4.00 scale: A+ 4.00 (80% and above), A 3.75 (75-79%), A- 3.50 (70-74%), B+ 3.25 (65-69%), B 3.00 (60-64%), B- 2.75 (55-59%), C+ 2.50 (50-54%), C 2.25 (45-49%), D 2.00 (40-44%) and F 0.00 (below 40%). The table comes from CUST’s own Academic Rules & Regulations, and it is identical to the national UGC scale.

How do I calculate my GPA at CUST?

Multiply each course’s credit hours by its grade point, add up all those products, add up all the credit hours, and divide the first total by the second. Example: 3 credits at A (3.75) gives 11.25 points. A semester of 15 credits totalling 49.50 points gives a GPA of 49.50 / 15 = 3.30. The homepage calculator does the same maths on the UGC Bangladesh scale.

What is the minimum CGPA required to graduate from CUST?

A minimum CGPA of 2.20 on the 4.00 scale is required for the award of the degree, and the same 2.20 line defines normal progress: below it, you are placed on academic probation. This is lower than the 2.50 graduation line used by several other Bangladeshi private universities, so do not import another university’s threshold.

Can I improve a grade at CUST, and what is the highest grade I can get?

Yes, if your grade in a regular exam is lower than B, you may sit an improvement exam for that course, cancelling the old grade. But the highest attainable grade in an improvement exam is B (3.00), even if you score 90% in the paper. You may improve at most 4 courses in a 4-year programme (5 in a 5-year programme), and you must apply at least 4 days before the exam date.

What happens if I fail a course at CUST?

You get an F (0.00) and no credit for the course. You may clear it through a clearance exam (for F grades from the regular exam) or a carryover exam (for backlog courses in a later semester), held 1-2 weeks after the semester finals. But watch the promotion limits: more than 2 failed courses in a semester, or more than 4 failed courses in total including carryovers, blocks promotion to the next class until you re-register and clear the backlog. Failing a sessional or practical course is worse: you must repeat the semester.

How much attendance do I need at CUST?

60% attendance in each course. Below 60% in a course, you may not sit its semester final, clearance, improvement or carryover exams. The university may condone a shortage on acceptable grounds, but that is discretionary. Attendance also carries 10% of the marks in theory and sessional courses, so missing classes costs marks as well as eligibility.

Is CUST Dhaka the same as CUST Pakistan or USTC?

No. CUST Dhaka (Central University of Science & Technology, Mirpur, Dhaka, founded 2016) is a different institution from CUST Pakistan (Capital University of Science and Technology, Islamabad, founded 1998, HEC scale) and from USTC (University of Science & Technology Chittagong, founded 1989). They share initials, not regulations. Always search with the full name plus “Dhaka” and “Mirpur”, and never use Islamabad’s grade points (A- 3.67, B+ 3.33) for a Dhaka CUST transcript.

Final Word

CUST’s grading system is, on paper, one of the more forgiving in Bangladesh: the national UGC table, a 2.20 graduation line instead of 2.50, a formal improvement system, and a 60% attendance bar instead of 75%. The strictness sits in the machinery around the table: the B cap on improvement, the 4-and-2 failed-course promotion limits, the repeat-the-semester rule for failed sessionals, the exam ban below 60% attendance, and the 14/16/8-semester clocks. Students who understand that machinery early, bank the 60% of marks decided before the final, and spend their few improvement attempts on their heaviest sub-B courses, will find the system workable. Students who discover it late, usually after an F or a probation notice, will find it expensive. Run your numbers through the calculator every semester, compare them against your result sheet, and when a rule in this guide meets a different rule on a department noticeboard, the noticeboard and the Registrar win: enquiries@cust.ac.bd, +8801781331600 (Admissions), +880 1347-535501 (Enquiries).

Sources

• CUST Academic Rules & Regulations (official PDF) – grade table, marks splits, GPA formula and worked example, improvement and promotion rules, attendance, probation, graduation and Dean’s List thresholds, degree timelines.
• Central University of Science & Technology (CUST), Dhaka – official homepage – campus address, programmes, WPLC/ILLC description, contact numbers, first convocation notice.
• Stamford University Bangladesh – grading system – UGC-scale cross-check.