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How do U.S. grad schools calculate U.K. GPAs?

Brian Leiter

A student in Scotland writes with this and other questions:

I am a Scottish student who hopes to apply to graduate programs in philosophy in the United States. I am finding the application process a little daunting because, as an international student, I am not entirely sure how to compare myself with American students. I have been informed from some sources, that a first class honours from a British university is automatically counted as equivalent to a 4.0 GPA, yet on the other hand I have also been told that my GPA will be calculated in some detail (which would be worrying, as in Scotland our grades aren't 'counted' for the first two years of study.) I am also entirely unsure as to how Scottish universities are regarded in the United States. I have heard that some competitive graduate programs take the 'pedigree' of an applicant's undergraduate institution very seriously – but I am not sure how these programs would regard foreign institutions. I was wondering if it would be possible for you to post this on your blog, as I would be interested to see if anyone has any suggestions of resources for foreign students considering applying to philosophy grad school in the states. I am aware of no websites or forums which address international students in particular. 

I'm opening this for comments from readers–especially on the GPA issue, since I don't know if there is a standard way U.S. programs have of handling this.   I think several of the Scottish programs are quite well-known and recognized in the U.S.:  St. Andrews and Edinburgh most clearly, but also, I would venture, Glasgow and Stirling.  And now that Catherine Wilson has moved to Aberdeen and Crispin Wright has located his Northern Institute of Philosophy there, I would expect that program's international profile will also rise.  But thoughts on that question from faculty with admissions experience will also be welcome.

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14 responses to “How do U.S. grad schools calculate U.K. GPAs?”

  1. Aidan McGlynn

    As I recall, Glasgow's philosophy department used to have a very useful webpage which laid out the process of applying from the UK to US grad programs in some detail, and compared to my (admittedly limited) experiences, rather accurately. I haven't been able to locate the link, but perhaps someone else will have more luck – or if it's been taken down, perhaps the author or department could be persuaded to make it available again. I don't remember if it directly addressed the question about GPAs (though I suspect not), but it was a very good resource overall.

    Reply
  2. Nathan Howard

    Aidan, is this it?

    http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/philosophy/Undergraduate%20Resources/Honours/Postgrad_Applications/PGAppsUS.htm

    Reply
  3. M A Richards

    I too found this process vexing when applying to the US after studying in a Welsh University, especially because, as you say, the first year doesn't count.

    The universities I've applied to (Political Theory) requested my GPA within the application, and initially I used a crude conversion guide that I found online. When calculating, I simply left out my first year grades and submitted my GPA for the following years. The universities all asked for transcripts also, so I'm unsure whether they checked the GPA I submitted, or whether it was just to verify the overall grade.

    One of the universities requested that I have my scores officially translated by a recognised company. They suggested two companies, and I used WES (http://www.wes.org/); I don't recall the other, sorry. They took several weeks to receive my transcripts and translate my GPA, and they also charged a fee. As it turned out, they calculated my GPA as a higher than I did, so I feel I may have undersold myself in the other applications.

    In light of this, because it removes the uncertainty and inaccuracy, I would recommend others use them or a similar organisation.

    Reply
  4. George Charles Allen

    This link from the University of Edinburgh, my postgrad alma mater, may be helpful. This web page provides a list of detailed US/UK grade equivalencies. In a letter from the International Affairs office it was written that "There is no agreed or recognised GPA/UK degree classification equivalence framework. Suggested 2:1 equivalents range from a 3.0 (or B) to a 3.5 (B+/A-)." Hope this might help in some way.

    http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/registry/exams/regulations/credit-allocation

    Reply
  5. George Charles Allen

    This may be well-known and standard (required) practice, but I should also note to the inquirer that my postgrad transcript from Edinburgh is accompanied by a similar detailed conversion table listed on the above website, along with clarifying notes, as a guideline for evaluators unfamiliar with the Scottish system. I would imagine this is the case with undergrad transcripts as well.

    Also, I don't think it would be unreasonable to call or e-mail the admissions office(s) in the US with your concern, ask if they have received applications from your particular school before and what you might expect in terms of evaluation. And if they haven't, perhaps ask how you might be able to aid them in that process.

    My guess is that if you're applying to top institutions, they may have plenty of practice handling Scottish credentials and a system of evaluation in place. However, since there is no real standardization, this process may be different from school to school.

    Good luck!

    Reply
  6. Fritz Warfield

    Surely every, or almost every, major US philosophy graduate program has many members who are familiar with British transcripts. I doubt that very many programs do any kind of conversion of British marks to American GPAs. Since we don't take the American GPAs all that seriously it's hard to see what the point of converting other types of evaluations to American-style GPAs would be.

    In my program, transcripts from any country including the USA are evaluated mostly to see what they can tell us about the philosophical background of the applicant. Grades (and other forms of marking) matter mostly as a negative – bad evaluations in philosphy courses don't look so good no matter where one is coming from. But writing samples tell us far more about applicants than grades. Many applicants with wonderful grades have poor writing samples.

    Reply
  7. Allen Hazen

    I don't have any up-to-date information, but my impression from decades-old experience is that each American institution handles these things differently. (First thing any foreigner should know about the U.S. educational system is that it is not a system!)

    In the late 1960s I had a clerical job in the graduate admissions office of large U.S. university. Applications from students with transcripts from U.S. institutions that had the usual (4 point) grading system were easy: just copy down the G.P.A. Applications from students who had attended U.S. institutions with non-standard grading systems (as I recall, Princeton, Yale and M.I.T. were among them at that time)… got handed to one of my clerical colleagues who had a fat loose-leaf folder with sheets listing the conversions the director of admissions had decided on for each one. Applications from overseas went to a "Foreign Students Office" before coming to the admissions office; Foreign Students provided an evaluation of each one ("Given the standards of the Berzerkistani universities and their grading systems, a degree with Golden Eagles Honours should be considered the equivalent of a 3.1" : that sort of thing.)

    I had one take-home piece of advice after this, which I gave any of my Australian students thinking of applying to an American university: Get your application in three months BEFORE the official deadline, as overseas applications sometimes go through an additional layer of Bureaucracy (= Foreign Students Office), and you can lose a place or an opportunity for scholarship aid just because of the delay that that produces. (Horror story on request.)

    Finally, a lot can depend on personal contacts– not yours as applicant, but other people's! During the 1980s Princeton recruited a number of very good graduate students from Australian universities. A major factor in this was that David Lewis used to escape the New Jersey summers by going to Oz. One effect of this was that Princeton was very much "on the radar" of Australian philosophers, so they were more likely to recommend it to their students than, say, P*******gh. Another effect was that, when the student did apply, the Princeton philosophers had a local expert who could tell them about the reputations of Australian universities and the sanity of the Australian philosophers who had written letters of recommendation.

    Bottom line: I think George Charles Allen's recommendation is eminently sensible: telephone or e-mail the Americans and say "The application form asks for my G.P.A. but we don't HAVE G.P.A.s in Scotland: what should I do?" … And get your application in early. It might even be worth while sending a follow-up e-mail a few weeks before the official application deadline to ask whether your application has been received: apologize for being paranoid but you have heard horror stories about the bureaucratic snafus at American universities.

    Remember: Americans don't believe in foreign countries.

    (This is not INTENDED to be discouraging. I think the Ph.D. programs at good American universities are probably better preparation for an academic career in philosophy than any others. (Even if your Scottish degree is more intensive than a typical U.S. undergraduate major, the American system of doing a year or two of post-graduate coursework before choosing a dissertation topic and starting to write is likely to be very valuable!) … And the ones WORTH applying to (list available from Professor Leiter (Grin!)) will probably have a few eccentric faculty members who actually know where Scotland is!)

    Reply
  8. Michael Kremer

    Fritz is I think right about departmental admissions committees. In my experience, we tend to have a sense of what UK grades mean and do not attempt a numerical translation into American grades. Even for American graduates we don't just look at GPA — many other factors matter in looking at an undergraduate, or MA, transcript.

    University administrations, however, may have requirements for minimum GPA for admission, or for various scholarships, and may therefore demand some sort of conversion for non US transcripts.

    Reply
  9. Michael Kremer

    Two comments on Allen Hazen's post.

    First, slightly off-topic… I can name off the top of my head five Australians who were graduate students with me at P********gh in the 80s: Ken Gemes (Birkbeck College), Neil Lewis (Georgetown), Patrick Maher (recently took early retirement from Indiana), Tim van Gelder (Melbourne), and John Quilter (Australian Catholic University). I wonder how they got there?

    Second, on-topic: here at Chicago I don't think there is any delay in getting foreign students' applications to the philosophy department admissions committee, as long as said applications are submitted on time. And we have students from many foreign countries (with degrees from their home countries) in our department. (Apart from Canada, we currently have students who came to us from institutions in Israel, Sweden, the UK, Italy, Turkey, Australia, and Venezuela.)

    Reply
  10. Ben Saunders

    My only experience goes the other way round – assessing foreign students (from the US and elsewhere) at a Scottish university – but I know of no GPA : UK degree class conversion table.

    I would agree with what others say; that there's likely no universally employed system and that degree classifications don't carry much weight, particularly where I'm unsure of their meaning: more attention given to writing samples, proposals, recommendations, etc.

    Reply
  11. Emanuel

    Perhaps the following may be of some use, say, as very rough equivalence tables/info:

    http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/media/Grade%20Conversion%20United%20States.pdf

    http://www.fulbright.co.uk/pre-departure/academics/marks#chart

    http://www.wes.org/gradeconversionguide/index.asp

    http://www.britishcouncil.org/usa-education-uk-system-k-12-education.htm

    http://www.reading.ac.uk/UnivRead/vr/VisStu/incoming/practical/gradeconversion.htm

    http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/media/Grade%20Conversion%20US%202011-2012.pdf

    http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/studyabroad/outgoingstudents/CreditandGradeConversion/

    http://www.fulbright.co.uk/study-in-the-usa/undergraduate-study/applying/transcript

    http://www.mcgill.ca/files/gps/fGeneralGPACalculation.pdf

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_undergraduate_degree_classification#cite_note-Fulbright_Commission_grade_conversion-16

    I don't have time to sort out the most relevant links from the above and I only took a cursory look at most of them after an equally hasty google search, but I tried to keep what seemed to be the more relevant/interesting/accurate ones at the top.

    It is worth noting, as I think was already mentioned here, that each department may well "decide" how grades convert based on their particular experiences/previous empirical evidence (eg, based on how students with x-grades from the UK/other-U perform relative to top US students) of the respective faculties. This, of course, adds a certain degree of randomness and perhaps idiosyncratic judgment to the process, alas. By analogy, e.g., Oxford lists a 2:1 as minimum requirement for entrance to some of its graduate programs, but they specifically note that that means, say, a 3.6 USA GPA (or 3.7 or 3.8!). It even varies from department to department (say, from law to philosophy to classics to modern languages). Some of the links above nevertheless state that a 2:1 goes from 3.0 to 3.8. We can probablhy draw at least two practical lessons from this. 1) Top departments know what they are looking for (or think they do, anyway, for some top US schools are notorious for grade deflation–eg, Swarthmore–and the Oxford example above would seem, prima facie, to effectively discriminate against their graduates/top students who may well outperform students at less rigorous programs in the US. (But perhaps Oxford is well aware of this?) 2) It is therefore worthwhile to inquire individually with each department one is planning to apply to–or, at the very least, to scrutinize their websites for admissions info and ask if questions arise (which, for philosophy students, they should!)

    Reply
  12. Law & Philosophy Student

    I've been educated on both sides of the Atlantic: a BA and MA in philosophy at a British university and a JD at an American university. I am currently apply to philosophy PhD programs in both the U.S. and U.K.

    Here are my questions:

    1. How would a U.S. university interpret an MA in distinction from a UK university – as good as a first class BA (which I think it is) or would they mistakenly assume that it only reflect, say, a rank in the top 1/3rd of one's class (which was the case for awarding "distinction" to the LLM program in my U.S. law school)

    2. Do British (and for that matter, American) philosophy departments realize that while J.D. grades are on a 4 point scale like American B.A. grades, they are "curved" downwards in such a way that an average J.D. grade is far lower than an average B.A. grade despite a more competitive field of students. Or would they likely just assume that a 3.5 in a JD (which is highly respectable) is equal to a 3.5 in a U.S. BA (which is presumably not competitive). Would it be advantageous to ask a recommendation writer to address the JD curved grading system?

    Reply
  13. Matthew Kramer

    On the first question raised by Law & Philosophy Student, anyone familiar with the British system of marking should know that a Distinction in a Master's program here is equivalent to an overall First. I advise you to ask your referees to state as much when they send their references to American universities. (Perhaps you can also get the degree-awarding institution to state as much when it supplies the transcript.)

    Reply
  14. Musgrave

    http://www.wes.org/gradeconversionguide/index.asp

    Kind of meaningless but this is a standard they use for American students studying in the UK.

    Reply

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