How to calculate UK undergrad GPA

[tiny_trevor]

Hi,

so I'm somewhat confused about the gpa system. I understand the basics, but thinking about applying to grad school it gets confusing.

 

I'm in my 3rd(out of 4) year of undergrad for an English Literature degree (Scotland). If I use all my courses for the 4 years, I'm currently sitting on a 3.06 gpa, because I made some bad outside course choices in first year. But only 3rd and 4th year coint towards my degree, so what courses/grades would I use to calculate my gpa?

 

I'm aiming high with postgrads for inspiration, but I would love to go to a good college in America for an MA or a PhD

 

thanks for any info!

[fuzzylogician]

Make sure that you are actually required to do this. In the vast majority of cases I know, international students aren't required to provide an American-style GPA, because they come from a different educational system. They provide their transcripts, and the university will know how to deal with it. In a very small number of cases, universities might ask for an external evaluation of the degree by a company that will also know how to convert the foreign GPA into a US one. Otherwise, you run exactly into this kind of trouble -- it's really not clear how you're supposed to do the conversion, because it's not one-to-one with the American system. 

[TakeruK]

Seconding @fuzzylogician experience---as an international student, I also did not have to convert my GPA to an American system. Most applications asked for the GPA in the format that your school provides them (in Canada, we often get graded on a scale of 0 to 100, so I wrote my GPA out of 100).

In my field anyways, I also notice that US schools don't usually ask for the 3rd and 4th year courses GPA separately, while other systems, like Canada, will basically only consider the 3rd and 4th year GPA for graduate admissions. However, they always ask for the transcript and it's my understanding that they will look at this and weigh the upper level courses more strongly. This can vary from field to field though.

[Feanor]

I think most US grad schools will be familiar with the UK 1st class, 2.1, etc system and if  you are not especifically required to fill in a GPA, don't include it. In case you have to just because it's in the form and it won't let your proceed otherwise, I've been told, as an international student,  to put "0" (by people who are supposed to know this kind of thing in depth).

[Tidus]

If you're unsure about if you should submit a GPA, or how to do it, I'd recommend e-mailing graduate admissions at the school to which you are applying. I'm a fellow UK applicant here and in 3/4 of my applications they made it fairly obvious that I wouldn't have to convert to a GPA. For the fourth I went with something along the lines of:

"I am currently filling in the Educational Background section for my graduate application to [school name] and am a little unsure as to how to specify my GPA. My degree is graded on the UK scale, which as far as I am aware has no official conversion to the US GPA scale. If you could provide some insight into how I should complete this section it would be very much appreciated."

...turns out they told me to just enter in my degree classification in the end, but can't hurt to play it safe.