what to put for GPA if from UK university

[tisch63]

Hi all

I went to a UK university for my Masters and am now applying to PhD programs in US and UK. Should I attempt to convert my grade to a 4.0 scale or should I simply put N/A if available. I know that US and UK grading systems are completely incompatible but a few applications I have do not give N/A for an option and when I convert the grade (or attempt to) it makes me look pretty bad. Any ideas or suggestions?

[bgk]

Hi all

I went to a UK university for my Masters and am now applying to PhD programs in US and UK. Should I attempt to convert my grade to a 4.0 scale or should I simply put N/A if available. I know that US and UK grading systems are completely incompatible but a few applications I have do not give N/A for an option and when I convert the grade (or attempt to) it makes me look pretty bad. Any ideas or suggestions?

Way back when ... I asked my UK advisor to write a paragraph in my LOR explaining the UK grading system, but also converted my overall undergraduate % to an approx. GPA.

[a fragrant plant]

The universities I apply state explicitly that applicants should not attempt to convert a foreign grading system to the US GPA scale. Some universities ask me to leave the box blank. For others that do not give clear guideline I simply put N/A. Don't try to convert your grade to GPA. It won't work. I worked as a teaching assistant in the UK and my UK colleagues told me that anything above 70% is an A. Having said that, very few people earn an A here (top 10 UK university). I did my B.A. in the U.S. and I found the UK grading system very strange.

[LordNorth]

Yes I would say don't try to convert it, just leave it blank or write in N/A. Sometimes it will demand that you enter a numerical value, in which case I just wrote 0.0. They have your transcripts, they can see from your application that you have a degree from a UK institution - the admissions committee will work it out. It's better that they realise what they're dealing with than be misled into thinking you have a certain GPA when you actually do not.

If in doubt, email to ask what you should do. I was scared for a while that I'd have to pay a company to give an assessment of what my UK transcripts mean in American terms. Luckily, both the schools that I followed up about this (Georgetown and NSSR) said not to bother - they'll be able to find their way around a UK transcript easily enough. IMO a conversation would not be reliable anyway - to me, the sheer fact that there are multiple accepted ways of doing the conversion undermines the claim that a reliable method exists.

PS you could always request that your referees include a line or two explaining how great your grades are, perhaps making reference to what the class average was or something like that.

[JerryLandis]

I go to a UK university that marks on a 20-point scale instead of by percentages. They include international conversion charts with the transcripts I requested. Perhaps you can ask around and see if your university has an official conversion system for the GPA?