GPA CONVERSION ..HELP!

[absy]

Always nice to learn something from our neighbors to the north.

[long_gone]

Always nice to learn something from our neighbors to the north.

Yes, I just realized that two countries really do have very different admission standards.  For example, a really good LSAT is more important than a really good GPA in the US it seems.

[absy]

Yeah.  LSAT is what matters most.  Guess I'm glad that I'm applying in the US instead of Canada

[long_gone]

There _is_ a school here in Canada, U of Alberta that I believe is 70% LSAT.  Needless to say, I am not applying there.  My first choice is 25% LSAT (mind you that is the lowest in the country; average is 40%)

[Cheeks]

on the US vs. Canadian note:

Canadian schools give much much lower marks.  The average GPA at a US college is somewhere around a 3.0 (or at least that's what I gather from what I hear on this board).  The average GPA at a Canadian school is around a 2.5 ...

An adcom. actually told me that they add a few points to Canadian GPA's to make them more competitive.

On the percentage note:

UWO doesn't give grades??? that seems really odd for a Canadian school.  LSAC takes the letter grade on your transcript, assigns it a GPA value, and then computes your overall GPA.  If you don't have letter grades, they have a conversion scale posted on their website somewhere....but i don't remember where.  sorry

[absy]

Aha!  I will actually be helpful this time around!

For the LSAC assessment of your GPA, you can reference page 23 of http://cachewww.lsac.org/pdfs/2004-2005/registration-book-2004.pdf

[long_gone]

on the US vs. Canadian note:

Canadian schools give much much lower marks.  The average GPA at a US college is somewhere around a 3.0 (or at least that's what I gather from what I hear on this board).  The average GPA at a Canadian school is around a 2.5 ...

An adcom. actually told me that they add a few points to Canadian GPA's to make them more competitive.

On the percentage note:

UWO doesn't give grades??? that seems really odd for a Canadian school.  LSAC takes the letter grade on your transcript, assigns it a GPA value, and then computes your overall GPA.  If you don't have letter grades, they have a conversion scale posted on their website somewhere....but i don't remember where.  sorry

UWO is not the only one.  Here at Waterloo everything is percentages with conversion being done on a do it yourself basis. The GPA scale in general is bad for percentages, unless you're always at an A+ cutoff (90%) in which cases it is BETTER than a percent scale.  You could, theoretically, have a 4.3 GPA if a school uses it, but you can't even theoretically have a 100% GPA.  On the other hand tell me if this isn't annoying:

89%
89%
94%
95%
89%
= 91.2% ; 4.12 GPA

85
85
90
90
85
= 87% ; 4.12 GPA

I hear percentages are sometimes fudged around bit by schools.  That would be nice because the number of 89s on my transcripts that are treated the same as 85s (or in some out of province universities same as 80s!) is really pissing the hell out of me.  Not that I'm complaining about my GPA as it is.  It would just be nice to not have to try on the LSAT at all 

The conversion scale that the LSAC gives is not of too much use if he is applying to a Canadian school, because the percentages between the two countries is all off.  98-100, for example, is an A+ in US.  98-100 doesn't even exist in Canada (from what I can tell, at least).  I've certainly never had a class where anyone got more than 95 and that was pretty darn rare.  I got my numbers which I posted at the top of this thread from my own school, they say that's how percentages are usually converted.  They told me with some uncertainty that that's how OLSAS probably does it.  LSAC, from what I've heard, doesn't treat Canadian percentages the same as they do US ones.  This makes sense because that would be a disaster.

As for the GPA scale:

http://www.law.unb.ca/admreq1st.html  ( scroll almost to the end of the page)

That scale is generally good, unless in cases where an A+ is worth the same as an A.  Also, some places like YORK which have to do everything differently use a 4.33 scale. 

[Matthew_24_24]

85
85
85
90
90

87% = 4.12 GPA

Hahaha, that's funny.  In psych here at U of A they take your percentage and convert it to a letter grade. For my major in psych:

96-100 A+  4
91-95 A    4
86-90 A-   3.7
81-85 B+   3.3

That fellow would have a stellar 3.45ish GPA here.

I have a 3.8 with 6 A+'s on my transcript, and no, A+ here is not 4.3.  It is just "noted on your transcript".  Percentage schools in Eastern Canada are such jokes.

[long_gone]

85
85
85
90
90

87% = 4.12 GPA

Hahaha, that's funny.  In psych here at U of A they take your percentage and convert it to a letter grade. For my major in psych:

96-100 A+  4
91-95 A    4
86-90 A-   3.7
81-85 B+   3.3

That fellow would have a stellar 3.45ish GPA here.

I have a 3.8 with 6 A+'s on my transcript, and no, A+ here is not 4.3.  It is just "noted on your transcript".  Percentage schools in Eastern Canada are such jokes.

That's a really weird percent scale Matt.  I know here in Ontario my scale seems to be pretty universal. 

As for this: "Percentage schools in Eastern Canada are such jokes."

You do realize that percentages here are harder to get, right?  UofT and Waterloo have some of the lowest GPAs in the country, but both basically (with one slight difference) use the percentage scale I have outlined.  I guess I learn something new everyday, like for example the fact that our countrymen in the West are crazy    Or, going back to the US, an A+ is 98-100.  I have never been in a class which had a higher grade than a 95.  90-91 was considerably more common.

BTW, A+s aren't always 4.3 here either.  It's up to the law schools to convert the GPA, though, and if they use a 4.3 your noted A+s will likely get upconverted.  For example, I believe UofT also treats an A+ as a 4 but it is still noted and in schools that use a 4.3, it is indeed upconverted (or so my friends tell me). Other than OLSAS, individual schools also do their own percent scaling.  I actually talked to U of Alberta about 7 million years ago (ie. last year) and the GPA scale they would have used to convert my percentages certainly isn't the one they seem to use themselves.  But then, Alberta uses a weirdo 9 point scale too, don't they?  Just like Osgoode, gotta be different in everything.

[Silversoma]

Ah, I think Matt is just talking about the percentage scales used in individual courses... different profs will use different methods of collecting your grade during the course, and then they tell the class how they derive a letter grade (and thus, a GPA), from your marks in that course.

For example, I've had several profs who grade your exam, and you get a percent.  And then, depending on the difficulty of the course, they assign those raw percent grades to letter grades.  Because psych courses tend to be "easy", people need to score a 91+ average in order to get an A.  On the other hand, in certain physical chemistry courses I have taken, getting a mere 75-80 gives you an A-, and an 81+ gets you an A.  That's because in those particular courses, there were exams where over 60% of the class received 50% or below on the exam, whereas in a typical first-year psych course, the lowest grade might be a 75%.

That's how it has worked for most of my science courses.  Then, in English, the profs tend to simply assign letter grades to tests and assignments, and the average of those grades becomes your final grade.  The whole percentage thing isn't an official scale by any means, it's just a way for profs to account for variances in course difficulty, so that you don't get an entire class that all get A's, or C-'s.