Whats my GPA?

May 23, 2010 12:34 AM

How to convert German "Abitur" grades to US Grades? (Bonus points for conversion to English and Spanish grades)

German grades go from 1 to 6, with 1 being the best, so one would assume that 1 = A?
But its much easier to get an A in the US than a 1 in Germany, so how can one convert these grades in a FAIR and OFFICIAL manner (i.e. some agreement between colleges/schools/countries to refer to)?

Also, if my Abiturdurchschnitt (my average grade on graduation) is 2.0, what would my US GPA be? And how does that conversion work?


Also bonus points for conversion to the British grade system (if any different) and the Spanish one!

posted by bruinbruin to Education (11 answers total)

Here you go. This is the source used by professional foreign credential evaluators.
posted by halogen at 1:11 AM on May 23, 2010 [1 favorite]

I'd contact the schools you're specifically interested in applying to.
posted by mdonley at 1:12 AM on May 23, 2010

so one would assume that 1 = A?

Definitely not. As you say, an Abitur 1 is really bloody hard to get, whereas an A in the American system is much easier.

Many American universities will give college credits for IB, Abitur, & A-levels the same way they do for American AP exams, so you might be best off looking for Abitur -> AP conversion tables.
posted by atrazine at 1:12 AM on May 23, 2010

U.S. international admissions offices are well aware that it is hard to earn an A equivalent in Germany. Your GPA will still be an American B (3.00), however.
posted by halogen at 1:13 AM on May 23, 2010

Huh, I guess I'm wrong as per halogen's link. I still think it might be a little more complex if you're doing the conversion for admissions purposes because of credit granted for high Abitur scores.
posted by atrazine at 1:14 AM on May 23, 2010

Oh, by the way, my source is indeed considered "FAIR and OFFICIAL", but you'll have to contact a foreign educational credentials evaluator (I do this on a freelance basis, so I won't link to a specific company) to obtain documents you can actually use for an application. Your university may or may not require it. It costs less than $200 for just a high-school diploma.

Your German 3.00 GPA won't be compared against that of applicants with 4.00+ U.S. high school GPAs. I was a student intern in the international admissions office of the currently ranked #17 U.S. university, MeMail me if I can help with anything.
posted by halogen at 1:30 AM on May 23, 2010

As far as the UK is concerned, you really need to talk to the places you're interested in applying (as mdonley says) - it's very difficult to make a direct comparison in grades because the examination systems are really quite different.

Edinburgh University has a general guide of what they'd be looking for in the Abitur - they're one of the top end universities, but not the very top (so you'd definitely need higher than that for Oxford and Cambridge, probably a bit higher for LSE, probably about the same for Manchester - but as I said, they set their standards themselves, so I could well be wrong about that).
posted by Coobeastie at 1:55 AM on May 23, 2010

How about you convert your German grades to a percent-system, 100% equalling the German "1", 0% equalling the German "6". Everybody should be able to understand this and you're still not comparing yourself to the U.S. system directly, which you say is less challenging.
posted by oxit at 3:47 AM on May 23, 2010

In the US every college sets its own GPA policies. Contacting the admissions office is the best way to figure out how to convert.
posted by twblalock at 4:20 AM on May 23, 2010

If you're applying to a university, English universities such as Oxford list their requirements in most international grades. Mind you, they care little about helping people understand their intricate system and apply, as my experience was with Oxford and the UCAS application system.
posted by blook at 6:02 AM on May 23, 2010

But its much easier to get an A in the US than a 1 in Germany, so how can one convert these grades in a FAIR and OFFICIAL manner (i.e. some agreement between colleges/schools/countries to refer to)?

There's huge variation in U.S. grading systems, too. It's much harder to get an A at some schools than at others. U.S. universities have various techniques for correcting for this. One of them is to look at class rank: they look not just at your raw GPA, but also where it put you in relation to your classmates. If your 3.96 GPA put you first in a class of 500 students, that says something different than if your 3.96 GPA put you 70th in a class of 500. Private universities, which have time to look at each application individually, will have some sense of the rigor of each program and take that into account when they evaluate your academic background.

So what I'm saying is that you probably will have to put 3.0, but that doesn't mean they're going to consider it equivalent to an American 3.0. And I would provide any supplemental information that you can, such as the grade distribution at your particular school and across the entire system, that will help them see what having a Abiturdurchschnitt of 2.0 really means.
posted by craichead at 6:56 AM on May 23, 2010