Hello all. I have a concern regarding my grades from my old school. See, I’m an international student who recently transferred to a U.S. school and my old school messed up my transcript. They basically mislabeled courses, combined classes, miscalculated my GPA and left off classes entirely. We used the 1-100 scale and anything above an 80 was excellent (I was top of my class), but they converted to the U.S. scale at face-value, therefore my GPA is around a 3.7. The country I’m talking about is the Domincan Republic by the way. I just want to know, will top colleges leave me out of the running because of this?
Colleges in US either will ask you to send the ORIGINAL transcript-that is, not converted-or use a third party system to ‘translate’ it.
Ask your school to re-send the transcript, but this time, in the form that you would receive if you were still in DR.
I’ve attempted to do so, but they’ve been non-complacent. They keep reiterating that the transcript is the “original one” despite my family’s protests. Besides, every transcript leaving the country is looked over by the Ministry of Education, and the school refuses to hand over what they deem to be the “unofficial one”. It’s really frustrating, to be honest.
How frustrating! Odds are that colleges will take whatever grades are on your high school transcript at face value. If the erroneous grades affect your GPA or class rank, they may well have an impact on admission or scholarship decisions.
Two ideas. If you pay for a formal course-by-course evaluation of your foreign coursework (e.g. by World Education Services), would your American high school be willing to re-consider how your foreign coursework appears on your US transcript?
Alternatively, you could send your foreign transcripts (and/or the evaluation report) directly to colleges when you apply, and express your concerns that your foreign coursework wasn’t credited properly. The top universities receive a lot of applications from abroad and will have people on staff who are experienced reading foreign transcripts. This would be more of a last-ditch effort. There’s also the risk that this strategy might backfire and make you look overly desperate.
What if I were to get my guidance counselor to explain this to colleges? Would that be beneficial?
It might. I am struggling to imagine what exactly your guidance counselor might say though. If he never saw your original grades, is he just going to take your words for it that your original grades were better than your “international transcript” showed?
I guess you’re right. I’ll use a translating company if that’s the case. I got a quota from one, and while the price is a little high, I think it’ll be well worth it.
Thank you!