For AMERICAN UNDERGRAD students

[UofT9919]

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Can someone explain the percentage/ letter grade conversions are to gpa for undergrads. I'm not talking about the conversion from UG to dental/ med. I was just curious why most prof. schools had gpas around 3.5 while in Canada they are around 3.9. I DO NOT want to make this into an argument about the difficulty and other stuff that some thread got into. So please just answer my the first sentence.

 

[KeyzerSoze]

AFAIK, all American schools gives transcripts with letter grades, not percentages like some Canadian schools. The letter grades vary greatly between courses, with some being graded with strict 90/80/70 cutoffs for A's B's and C's and some being curved. Depends on the course/professor.

AMCAS then looks at your transcript and converts the grades to a numeric GPA, sometimes differently than the transcript does. A = 4, B = 3, C = 2, etc. I think that as far as AMCAS is concerned +/- grades are A- = 3.7, B+ = 3.3, etc, regardless of how your school calculates it, but I'm not sure.

So in American schools (especially those without +/- grades) you can get 89% of the points in a course which isn't curved and get a 3.0 (3.3 if your school had half grades). According to the OMSAS conversions, that would have been a 3.9 if you had a transcript from a Canadian school such as U of T which listed 89% on it. Likewise, here you could get 79% and get a 2.0, while at U of T that would 3.30.

I'm really glad I took the time to look into this. Now I can cite this post every time some tuque-wearing hosehead comes in here and whinges about American medical school matriculants with low GPA's.


Edit: In retrospect, I'm not sure if I understood or addressed your question. I think it's a good answer, but possibly to a different question. Are you asking about GPA in medical school? Many schools are pass/fail, and those that aren't pass/fail have averages far lower than 3.5 -- that would be like everyone getting high pass/honors.

 

[redlight]

wow, 3.9 = 89%? im guessing that means getting an 89% can be pretty tough at UoT.

OP, grading can vary from prof to prof. some curve, some follow strict point/percent systems, some dish out grades based on percentiles (e.g top 20% get A's).

there are also differences between schools because in some schools "+" and "-" grades dont exist.. so a 90% could be an A/4.0 or an A-/3.7

 

[chemnerd89]

Ameeeeeriiiiiica! F*** Yeah!

 

[UofT9919]

AFAIK, all American schools gives transcripts with letter grades, not percentages like some Canadian schools. The letter grades vary greatly between courses, with some being graded with strict 90/80/70 cutoffs for A's B's and C's and some being curved. Depends on the course/professor.

AMCAS then looks at your transcript and converts the grades to a numeric GPA, sometimes differently than the transcript does. A = 4, B = 3, C = 2, etc. I think that as far as AMCAS is concerned +/- grades are A- = 3.7, B+ = 3.3, etc, regardless of how your school calculates it, but I'm not sure.

So in American schools (especially those without +/- grades) you can get 89% of the points in a course which isn't curved and get a 3.0 (3.3 if your school had half grades). According to the OMSAS conversions, that would have been a 3.9 if you had a transcript from a Canadian school such as U of T which listed 89% on it. Likewise, here you could get 79% and get a 2.0, while at U of T that would 3.30.

I'm really glad I took the time to look into this. Now I can cite this post every time some tuque-wearing hosehead comes in here and whinges about American medical school matriculants with low GPA's.


Edit: In retrospect, I'm not sure if I understood or addressed your question. I think it's a good answer, but possibly to a different question. Are you asking about GPA in medical school? Many schools are pass/fail, and those that aren't pass/fail have averages far lower than 3.5 -- that would be like everyone getting high pass/honors.

Thanks great answer. I was confused when I saw some the top schools avg. gpa (Harvard, ....) for Dental that I knew there was some other reason why the gpa was lower compared to my school Utoronto other than the possibility that Harvard is looking for a more "well-rounded" student.

 

[dr zaius]

I got excited because I thought this was a thread for American pre-meds 🙁