when you transfer high school from canada to US....

Student Lounge International Students
1

<p>Canada uses percentage system while the states uses the GPA system. my canadian school had 2 different levels of courses, Applied and Academic, with academic courses being harder.
i had always gotten straight As in canada and is the top of my class
when i transfered to the states, they made all my As (80%+ is an A in canada, no one gets all 90%+, its simply not achieved) into Bs, and they weighed my Academic courses like applied courses.... (this current school has 3 different level courses, 4.0 5.0 and 6.0 courses, so they treated all my courses taken in Canada before as 4.0 courses)
so now my weighed GPA is only 4.2 (out of a possible 6.5 at this school) and im only ranked 303/1020.... </p>

<p>i moved to the states for 11th grade and im currently a senior.
last year, for grade 11, i scored 98%+ on all of my courses in this new school, and they get the same weight as a 90%.</p>

<p>now i'm so mad because my class rank is so terrible, is there anything i can do? do colleges even understand the process? will they give me a chance to explain? i mean i scored a 97 percentile on my SATs, i atleast deserve a top 10% class rank......</p>

2

<p>first talk to your gc and principle, maybe they dont understand the canadian system?
secondly, theres a spot on a lot of college applications asking for "anything you need to explination, ect."... used to explain that they were sick for all of sophmore year, and thats why their gpa was so low type thing, and for the exact sort of misunderstanding you are talking about
also, i think most prestigious colleges in the US know how the canadian system works, so if you note that you transfered they should be able to understand what happened pretty well</p>