Here’s what my GPA would have been when I applied for Ivy League schools

So until last year, I had spent 10 years in higher education in the UK. I did apply for American graduate schools multiple times — and received some acceptances and rejections from Ivy League schools. It was there I had learnt what my American GPA would have been for my UK undergraduate degree result.

I have no idea what a decent GPA is, nor do I know exactly how to calculate one. I do know many countries’ education systems follow GPA metrics, despite their lack of direct equivalence. Especially when American higher education has always been a priority for international students (in spite of the recent Trump-Harvard saga), I would always like to find out what my education result is equivalent to in an American GPA.

I applied for multiple postgraduate degree programmes in the US, led by Harvard and Columbia, even though I had never planned to transition from the UK to the American higher education system. Perhaps because American graduate programmes are heavily taught-based, I had lacked any interest in studying in the US. That being said, however, the prestige of the Ivy League schools had led me to apply for their graduate programmes just to see whether I would be accepted (like how I applied for Oxford and got accepted upon finishing my PhD, even though I did not want to continue formal education once I had earned my ‘Dr.’ title).

For Ivy League schools, international transcripts (including those from the UK) typically require evaluation to verify their equivalence to an American bachelor’s degree. This evaluation is usually performed by a designated agency like International Education Evaluations (IEE) or the Centre for Educational Documentation (CED). Such evaluation is necessary for international students who would like to apply for American degree programmes.

My bachelor’s degree grade in the UK is 65%, sitting as an average to marginally strong 2:i. Earning a 2:i can get you a lot of master’s degree application opportunities in the UK, including those top schools in London. However, a 65% result is nearly ineligible for postgraduate degree applications for the majority of Oxbridge programmes.

So, what is a 65% grade equivalent to in an American GPA?

It turns out it is GPA 3.32.

Again, I barely have an idea about what defines a good or decent GPA. All I heard is that a GPA above 3.0 “doesn’t suck”, but a GPA below 3.6 or 3.7 “isn’t good”. At least that’s what I heard from others.

I am not sure if you would like to apply for American degrees. Even if you do not, it does not harm you to find out what your international qualifications are equivalent to in an American GPA. You can probably satisfy your curiosity by paying for services offered by IEE, CED or other accredited US-based international transcript evaluation agencies.

And it sounds fair to me that a 65% grade in the UK is equivalent to a GPA 3.32 in the US.

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