<p>I think this question might be important for all international students studying at a high school with a special grading/school system.
Do admission officers exactly know how to convert grades? Well of course that might be easy, but in Germany for example it's really hard to get the best grade, a 1, (normally, only 1 student of a whole grade at my school graduates with straight 1s), . Besides my high school doesn't offer any kind of APs or possibilities to take harder classes than the other students - every curriculum is the same and there are few options to choose domething at all. I have 13 different subjects each semester (36 classes per week), so there's not much time left to be a leader in 10 other kinds of activities (which is not even offered). Will this different system hurt my chances compared to international schools, where you can take APs or get the IB? The German Abitur is not bad, though, but it's very different from high schools.</p>
<p>I have a grade average of 1.1, but other students with only As and more possibilities for ECs could have a much better chance of getting into a highly selective college, even though we might have achieved about the same. Do I have to worry about this? Please let me know what you think about that.</p>
<p>Admissions officers ARE familiar with other school systems. That said, most schools also require your transcripts and grades are evaluated through a 3-rd party evaluation service, such as this one [World</a> Education Services - International Education Intelligence](<a href=“http://www.wes.org/]World”>http://www.wes.org/)</p>
<p>I have applied to 10 colleges and among them there are MIT, U of Michigan, Penn State (I got into Penn state :D) and I didn’t have any problems with any of them (they all accepted the Greek Educational Grading System, which is different from the one in US) and also no one asked for a 3rd party evaluation which I believe is a nice way to throw away your money. </p>
<p>If you want to translate your grades go to your schools principals office and tell them to make a translation and sign it or for better results and integrity go to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of your country (that’s what I did) and they will translate your school transcripts.</p>
<p>I asked the same question to the schools I applied to, and they said that they have experience in dealing with international students. Therefore, they do not need any sort of evaluation. Having said that, a couple of schools did say that if I could provide any grade conversion, it’ll be good but its not necessary.</p>
<p>I guess the bigger schools understand the foreign educational systems better than the smaller ones do.</p>
<p>That’s it in a nutshell. If you are applying to Harvard, MIT, Princeton, etc., then you can reasonably assume that they get a lot of international applicants and are familiar with a wide variety of grading systems. If you are applying to the (fictitious) University of Lower Slobovia, then you cannot make that assumption.</p>