you can't convert precentages to GPA. Report your grades as percentages. The adcom knows what "First class with distinction" , "First class" etc stands for. It helps if you include your rank in the class (1/120) so that they can gauge where you stand. Of course, you may need to submit a rank certificate or letter from your institution.

Try this link, it worked for me (although I'm not from India).

http://www.wes.org/gradeconversionguide/india.htm

Hope it helps. L.

I would second Lhotseface.

I applied to five schools and all with percentages. It all depends on the school. For ex.. Columbia has a table for conversion but i dont think that table is correct for Indian grading system.

The link you sent is total BS how can 60-100 be all A, total rubbish

Jai, thank you for your message. While I'm not acquainted with the particularities of the Indian system, I would advice caution when it comes to evaluating other people's work (just to clarify, not my work).

Some notes on the spirit behind this table:

- Different education systems perceive grades differently. While As maybe common at grade - inflationed schools / countries, they may be reserved to the absolute stellar in other schools / countries. It is not uncommon in some places for entire classes to get mostly (the equivalent) to Cs and Ds with only 1 or 2 people scoring Bs or above.

For eg: in a scale from 1 to 10, the person with the highest average at my undergrad (not in India, but elsewhere), got an 8.8 (and we were not a bunch of retards, btw). If you translate that grade lightly, you would assume he got a 3.25. Yet this guy graduated within the top 0.5% of his class, with honors, etc.

Another eg.: some professors at local universities explain their grading system on a 1 to 10 scale as follows:

10 GOD
9 me
8 brilliant student
5-7 very good student
4 (last passing grade) average+ student.
0-3.99 everyone else.

So I would not rush to the kind of conclusions that sm has drawn, i.e. "I'd love to study in India" based on assuming grades mean the same all around the world.

And last but not least, lhotse, you are right, I forgot to mention that even when there are some tools available to convert GPAs I would never do so in an application.

Cheers. L.

Curious to know your school, but my college( NIT) is at the other end of the extreme..where the topper had scored 95% ....

wondering how can the adcom make sense out of it..if they have to evaluate say a lhotseface vs ozie .....

Oh man..you are an achiever !!!...yeah REC is rebranded as NIT....aaprt from the name change and more funding they are not adding any value addition to the industry or students..i doubt even if IIT's made any difference to the indian economy

You have a hell a lot of stories to impress the adcom, which you did any way !!!!

I am still debating whether that was the right thing to do... -- why ? I think it was the best decision you have taken, which helped you to experience the world...which wouldn't have been possible had you sticked to your dad's company back home

well you might have a different opinion

I agree with Lepium. In my undergrad school the average score was 58% i.e second class. If one scored above 60%(First class) he was above average.
<10 % of the students managed to score more than 65%. <3% of the students managed to score 70% aggregate.
There are few universities in India where people tend to score more 85% on average.

I hope that adcom knows about these discrepancies and considers each accordingly.

All,
I am facing this Percentage to GPA dilemma myself and after having spoken to a professor in Ivy league, I learnt that a <3.5 could be risky as it brings down the average of the entering class. I reached out to the school to find out how my 78%, and being in the top 5 in a class of 60 would be normalized to a GPA but haven't heard back. There are no grades on my mark-sheet, so all one can know is that it is an Honors degree from a certain university in India. Looking at some conversion formulae on Internet, my GPA can go as low as 2.9, which I personally feel is inaccurate.
Should I try to explain my position on percentage and all in the optional essay? Earlier I was thinking of explaining a recent job switch, the only one in last 7 years, in the optional essay. Can I explain two things in the optional essay - % and job switch?

Thanks a lot for your help.
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Good Luck!!!

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