In the United States, credential evaluation, which includes the grade conversion, is a completely private industry that is based on advisory reporting by agencies like Scholaro or WES for further education, employment, licensure, etc. In higher education, colleges and universities are autonomous, and have complete freedom in accepting advisory grade conversion from evaluation agencies, or have their own conversion scales. This is similar to awarding grades. Just like in other countries, it is possible for one institution to be very rigorous while others can be more lenient and award higher grades. Does this potentially penalize harder-working students? In short, yes, but this illustrates why grading itself is an imperfect system.

Imperfect grading is a reality in academia. Grading is an attempt to quantify an inherently qualitative concept – learning. There are a number of factors that can influence a grade, including institutional and national practices mentioned above, performance on a test, perception of effort, quality of independent work, and, notably, instructor discretion. Therefore, when training new admissions officers at colleges and universities, we advise to consider grades as only one part of a holistic review to determine if an applicant is capable to succeed in the program they are applying to.

Admissions officers, in the United States and other countries, often rely on evaluation services to convert foreign grades to national standards such as the 4.00 scale in the United States. Evaluation services, in turn, rely on publications about foreign grading practices to develop conversion tables, but there is no one agency or resource for standardization, both nationally and internationally. At Scholaro, we have developed general guidelines for approaching grade conversion and outlined them as such:

  1. Identify the foreign grading scale, including highest grade, lowest passing score, and any descriptors for each grade that may be available.

  2. Identify the level of education and any institutional guidelines to determine the appropriate target grading scale.

  3. Plot the highest possible grade against the highest possible grade on the target scale.

  4. Plot the minimum pass against the minimum passing grade on the target scale.

  5. Utilize word descriptors if available to distribute the remaining grades between the maximum and minimum. When no descriptors are available, attempt to distribute remaining grades equally, noting that some combinations may be necessary if the grading systems are not linear.

Scholaro utilizes the above methodology in all grade conversion scenarios, but exceptions are always possible because education systems are fundamentally different. The one constant that can provide students and administrators confidence in using Scholaro’s resources is transparency. While this article provides the general methodology that Scholaro uses to convert foreign grades, our grade conversions are published on our International Education Database, which is free and open to the public. It also includes a free GPA calculator that converts foreign grades based on the published grading scales and calculates grade point averages.

Students and administrators have many choices is selecting a credential evaluation service or resources on interpreting foreign grades. As a concept, grading may not be perfect, but It is an inherent part of modern education systems. By promoting transparency, providing training, and publishing resources, Scholaro attempts to add some fairness to the process.