<p>My daughter is a dual US/Canadian citizen living in the US. She will be applying to some Canadian universities. When we visited and when I read the websites, these universities only talk only about % grades (e.g., minimum required grade for admission 65% or 75%; minimum for a certain scholarship 95%, etc.). </p>
<p>There is no obvious algorithm for turning letter grades into percentage grades. I couldn't find anything dispositive about how Canadian schools would convert letter grades to percentage grades. On some Canadian discussion pages, students suggest that the Canadian grading system equates 90-100 with an A and 80-90 with a B. I haven't found anything dispositive for Canadian high schools but have found conversion tables for Canadian universities and they are very different from what I'd guess CA grades mean. At the University of Western Ontario, an A is equivalent to 80-90 and A+ is equivalent to 90-100. A B is thus a 70-80. See Transcripts</a> - Office of the Registrar - The University of Western Ontario. At the University of Toronto are a couple of other conversion tables that equate an A / A+ to 85-100 (see What</a> is the point of the Grade Point Average? The Frame Problem). Here is the gobbledy-gook system that Canadian medical schools use to standardize grades just from Canadian universities (GPA</a> Conversion Chart — Career Services) -- note the relatively low translation of a B here (70-74). </p>
<p>How do the universities do the conversion? I asked my daughter's GC to send one and she looked at me strangely. Some of our kids apply to Canadian schools every year and they would ask if they had questions -- and some get in so therefore all must be well with the world. However, she has no idea what they actually do. At 3 university admissions offices, I asked what % grade would correspond to a 3.6 and did not get an answer.</p>
<p>Any thoughts? Is this a solved problem as the guidance counselor seems to think? Or is it a potential mess, in which a university might use an algorithm that doesn't fit the high school?</p>
<p>Non-problem – they don’t need to convert grades because their adcoms are apparently quite familiar with other schooling systems, especially Canadian percentages.</p>
<p>StarsAligned, I agree that US adcoms have no problem with Canadian percentages. But, my issue is the reverse. How do Canadian adcoms convert letter grades to Canadian percentages?</p>
<p>Well I only know they have conversions for IB scores.
I found e-mailing the university admissions office very helpful (only a few days for a response).</p>
<p>^Um, that’s not a Canadian conversion, that’s entirely American (and what UMich uses.) FWIW, Shawbridge, I was told by different Canadian universities last year that EACH admissions office has its own conversion methodology and they never disclosed it to me.</p>
<p>PPSS - UBC, for example, requires a minimum of a 3.5 GPA for entering American students. That’s baseline for admission. Don’t know if Queens has same. A’s are not generally given out as readily in Canadian secondary school, so in Ontario, an average of 80% used to entitle one to the designation of “Ontario Scholar.” Most of the schools require the “12U” courses, which are college prep in nature, perhaps similar to AP, and can be sought in a fifth year of HS (also in the 4th, but it’s not as unusual in Ontario for a student to attend HS for 5th year prior to university). So the regular 12U Music Theory, for example, more closely resembles AP Music Theory or year one of regular college in the music theory it covers.</p>
<p>PS - I should add that this chart is meant for those going the other direction, I believe, but you could infer that admissions uses roughly the same approach, I would think. Just a guess.</p>
<p>thanks, Nosike. That scale is probably similar to what ShawD’s school might use in the math/science classes.</p>
<p>kmc, did the schools say that they wouldn’t tell you their conversion methodology? I didn’t specifically ask. I did call an admissions counselor we’d met with, who had said that they relied upon the school to provide a translation and that most American schools had such a table either on the back of the transcript of in the description of the school they provide to admissions committees. He said he would probably call if he didn’t have such a table. That suggests that a) not all schools have their own mysterious methodology; and b) that many US schools supply a table.</p>
<p>But, providing a scale could be consequential. According to Nosike’s US scale, an A- is, on average, a 91.5 in the US, whereas on a Canadian scale, an A- might be something around 87. When they make decisions about ShawD, I’d prefer they use the American translation scale (where the grades were actually given) and not the Canadian one when they are deciding whether she meets an 85% or 75% cutoff.</p>
<p>Since there are American students at every university in Canada, I think you can be confident that the admissions offices know how to evaluate U.S. grades. I know that U of T has an interactive sytem on their website for international students which will provide info on requirements, pre-requisites, AP credit, etc. I haven’t looked at it recently but it might have the information you need. If not, give them a call, if you’re interested in U of T. You might also be able to find some information on OUAC which is the organization that handles all applications for Ontario universities. Best of luck to her!</p>
<p>Yes, Shawbridge, one actually said they didn’t disclose it when I specifically asked, but at the same time said McSon was eligible for the highest level of entrance scholarship in question by virtue of his g/t program (eg. suggesting it was grade plus g/t program). But others did not say this. It was the department head, who I knew personally at one, who had mentioned informally that US grades were all over the map and the challenge of determining for example if a 4.0 really meant a typical 4.0 student or a student or more closely resembled an incoming 3.5 Cdn student.</p>
<p>I do know that indeed our school supplied a conversion chart in a summary from the guidance office that was sent independently from the school. So if Queens has told you it relies upon the school’s conversion chart, then I suspect that is true and that your D’s GC can give you the document for review. In your case, with the extracurricular research interests of your D, I suspect they’ll put the lion’s share of weight on that as opposed to a strict interpretation of grades to a percentage.</p>
<p>alwaysamom, that is probably true for the schools like McGill that get lots of US applicants but clearly not for a couple of the smaller schools we talked to. </p>
<p>In addition, as kmc said, not all US high schools grade the same. ShawD’s private high school grades to a strict curve with a B- median. Some teachers haven’t given an A in several years. [ShawD wrote a paper in an English class in which the teacher said some of the writing was probably the best he ever had seen from a high school student, that in a school that prides itself on teaching writing, although other parts were not as good – he gave her a B.] So, it is probably a lot tougher than many US schools. In my son’s public HS, where the kids in the honors classes were probably equally smart as those in the private school, if you diligently did all of the work and basically got the concepts, you could get an A-. So, different US high schools will have different grading standards. An adcom person at McGill told me that they try to know the tough graders in ShawD’s school. But, other Canadian schools that get an applicant every few years from her school, may not know how it grades.</p>
<p>alwaysamom, I had looked at the OUAC, but did not find any guidance there. The good news: other than persuading a recalcitrant GC to send in a form that most schools provide, applying in Canada is whole lot less work and stress.</p>
<p>shawbridge, I understand that there is a very wide variety of grading systems in the U.S. and clearly the Canadian schools are aware of this, too. How they take all this into account may vary and the schools that get the most U.S. applicants and who have more experience doing it are probably more likely to be able to be helpful than those who get fewer U.S. applicants. However, as I said, there are U.S. students at all Canadian universities, small and large. If Queens is one that you’re looking at, I can assure you that they have a lot of experience longterm with U.S. applicants. I was one many years ago! :)</p>
<p>Good luck with getting the GC to provide the needed materials.</p>
<p>Thanks, ubcconnections, your post is very helpful. I have a couple of clarifying questions. I do care about how the translation it made between letter grades and number grades for precisely the reason you suggest and the facts that my daughter’s school is small (fewer than 100 in the graduating class) who tend to apply to Northeast US schools and may have tougher grading standards than the typical US school. The school’s list of “known” Canadian schools is McGill, where a few kids apply every year, and Toronto, Queens, King’s/Dalhousie, Concordia, Waterloo and Acadia (only one applicant in recent memory). So it has never had applicants to a number of Canadian universities including UBC. If it has tougher grading standards, it seems like not sending a table could disadvantage applicants to Canadian universities that don’t know the school. Her GC seems not to want to supply an equivalence table. In that regard, I have two questions:</p>
<p>Is it true that most US high schools submit the kind of table explaining their numerical equivalents to letter grades (e.g. 93-100 is equivalent to an A)?</p>
<p>If UBC received an applicant from a high school whose students had never applied to UBC before and if the high school did not supply the equivalence table, how would you (UBC) translate the letter grades? Is my hypothesis that not giving an equivalence table would hurt applicants to UBC from tough grading schools likely to be correct (relative to supplying a table)?</p>
<p>The good news is that ShawD’s adviser is from a country where they also use percentage grades and understands the issue in a way that the GC seems not to. While the adviser is on leave, she had a couple of useful suggestions for prying loose a list.</p>
<p>Shaw, McSon’s school had but a few Canadian applicants in its history as well and also had a graduating class of about 100. Some Canadian schools, such as Winnipeg, knew our school because former students had done well there. But other schools didn’t. On the profile our guidance office prepared, it included statistical data, including the average ACT/SAT score for McSon’s class, the distribution/average GPA, the number of courses rated honors, AP or above, and information about it’s IB accreditation process in which it was in the throes of. I believe the document clearly telegraphed the quality of the program. I would be very surprised if your daughter’s was not similar, since the purpose of the document is to assist admissions officers everywhere. Even American schools face the issue of discerning such things, although they’re more likely to be aware of the schools. (Eg. at Umich before their admission metric had to change legally, McSon’s school was assigned a substantial # of “points” in the admit calculation that essentially brought UP the GPAs of students since it was known to be tough.)</p>
<p>That said, although his recommendations referred to McSon as a 'top 2 percent in terms of character and 5% in terms of performance" student, his GPA was considerably lower than the comprehensive equivalent. Yet he received two scholarships at a university where he was below the median GPA (but not ACT), and was assured similar treatment in Canada had he not rescinded after he accepted the former offer. I struggled with many of your same concerns, but post-facto have concluded that indeed, there is a metric by which to holistically evaluate the rigor and quality of a student’s education, and that it is a combination of GPA, school profile, performance on standardized test, quality of essays and quality of recommendations. </p>
<p>I think the simplest way to aid admissions officers is to submit at least two letters of recommendations and if permitted, to make comments on the application about the rigor of the program to flag a careful reading of the school profile. Hope this helps reassure you that your daughter’s accomplishments will not go unnoticed, but I don’t blame you a bit for your reservations
Cheers,
K</p>
<p>Is this really the grade percentages? They seem extremely high… Does anyone ever get A+?? Going to uni in Australia, getting 80%+ is a great achievement and probably only 10-15% of people get that in each unit. Kinda seems ridiculous to compare the two… I’m kinda worried now haha</p>
<p>kmc, good point. I will ask to see the school profile, as that might allay some of my fears (though even better would be for them to also supply the equivalence table).</p>
I know that U of T has an interactive sytem on their website for international students which will provide info on requirements, pre-requisites, AP credit, etc. I haven’t looked at it recently but it might have the information you need. If not, give them a call, if you’re interested in U of T. You might also be able to find some information on OUAC which is the organization that handles all applications for Ontario universities. Best of luck to her!</p>