What Year Will I Graduate? Graduation Year Calculator

Try an example

• One day apart, a year apart: with a September 1 cutoff, a child born September 1, 2020 is the class of 2038, and one born September 2, 2020 is the class of 2039.
• The cutoff matters: a child born October 20, 2019 is the class of 2038 with a September 1 cutoff, but with a December 31 cutoff is 5 in time to start in 2024 and is the class of 2037.
• A leap day baby born February 29, 2020 turns 5 in 2025, well before a fall cutoff, and is the class of 2038.
• Barack Obama, born August 4, 1961, graduated from Punahou School in Honolulu in 1979, the class a September 1 cutoff gives. An August birthday that close to the cutoff makes a child one of the youngest in the class.
• A student in 9th grade in 2026-27 is the class of 2030.

How the calculator works

A child starts kindergarten in the fall of the year they are 5 on or before the cutoff date, then moves up a grade every school year. Kindergarten plus grades 1 to 12 is 13 school years, so the high school class year is the kindergarten year plus 13. A school year is named by the fall it starts in (2026-27 starts in 2026), and for "the grade this school year" the calculator treats August 1 as the day a new school year begins.

It assumes the child starts on time and does not skip or repeat a grade. It follows the US K-12 system; other countries group school years differently.

Kindergarten cutoff dates

Each state sets the date by which a child must turn 5 to start kindergarten that school year. Most use a date between August 1 and October 1, and September 1 is the most common; a few use a later date such as December 1 or December 31, and some leave it to each district. A birthday on the cutoff day itself counts: with a September 1 cutoff, a child born on September 1 starts that year.

Cutoffs change from time to time, and when a state moves its date, children born in the gap shift a year. Check your state's education department or your school district before counting on one, then pick it in the calculator.

Summer birthdays and waiting a year

A child born in the two months before the cutoff is one of the youngest in the class, and some parents choose to wait a year before kindergarten, which puts the child in the next class. When a birthday is that close, the calculator names both class years. A child born just after the cutoff is one of the oldest; a few districts allow early entry, usually after an assessment.

Class year by birth date (September 1 cutoff)

For a September 1 cutoff, each class runs from births on September 2 to births on September 1 of the next year. The grades are for the 2026-27 school year.

What year will I graduate?

Count the grades left after this one and add them to the year this school year ends. A 10th grader in 2026-27 has 11th and 12th grade to go, so graduates in spring 2029. A senior graduates at the end of the current school year: the class of 2027 this year. Four years of college started straight after would end in 2033.

Related tools

To find a birth year from an age, use the birth year calculator. To see which generation a class belongs to, use the generation calculator. To find the weekday a first day of school falls on, use the day of the week calculator.

School years on a timeline

From kindergarten to graduation is 13 years of milestones. To lay a child's school years, or a whole family's, out year by year, Preceden can put them on a timeline.