German grades -> GPA - anyone got experience/information?

[itsmi]

Hi all,
and welcome to my third post!

Can anyone help me 'translating' my grades from the German system (ECTS) to the GPA system? The grades in Germany ranges from 1 to 5 with 1 being the highest and 4.0 the last grade before failure.

I found a lot of different information. Some people are just translating it one by one (like 1.0 corresponds with 4.0, 1.3 with 3.7 etc.) and a lot of others found a way like 1.0, 1.3 -> A -> 3.5...4.0 etc. I NEED SOMETHING OFFICIAL AND ACCURATE! I am really confused..

The best information would be directly from the Universities. However, I haven't found anything on their homepages. And I searched a lot!

Thank you very much!
Jochen

//edit: I know that there is some extra forum for international student concerns. However, I guess that my topic fits to both of them. If not *big sorry*, please move my post..

[negru]

Every school will say on its app how to convert the GPA. Most will want to leave it as it is but explain how it works, others will tell you to convert it proportionally. You will probably not want to convert every grade on your transcript so you don't care about A,B,C etc, as there isn't a unique understanding of what these mean in terms of numbers anyway.

[itsmi]

You are right, most of the Universities are telling to leave the grades as they are. But I haven't found any information about how they are converting it. I just want to translate the average.
The reason is that I am quite insecure about where to apply - I guess and also read that the grading in Germany/Europe is a bit harder than it is in US. So whats happening if you are #1 but the average is just ~1.5 (on a scale 1 to 5 with 1 being the highest)? If you just translate it to 3.5 GPA I guess that I would not have good chances even not at top30.

[negru]

How do you get grades on a 1 to 5 reversed scale anyway? Don't you get things like 80% on tests or smth?

[itsmi]

Unfortunately not. We are getting grades on the 1 to 5 scale for every subject/thesis etc.. The average is calculated with the weight.

For example: Every term has 30 ECTS. Mathematics has 6 ECTS and so on. At the end (3.5 years, 7 terms) we received 210 ECTS. The final (average) grade is simply calculated by (grade1*ects1+grade2*ects2...)/210. The result is an average grade, for example 1.5. We also don't have an official ranking.

[grae313]

You are right, most of the Universities are telling to leave the grades as they are. But I haven't found any information about how they are converting it. I just want to translate the average.
The reason is that I am quite insecure about where to apply - I guess and also read that the grading in Germany/Europe is a bit harder than it is in US. So whats happening if you are #1 but the average is just ~1.5 (on a scale 1 to 5 with 1 being the highest)? If you just translate it to 3.5 GPA I guess that I would not have good chances even not at top30.

It's important for you to ask at least one of your letter writers to address this in their letter. They should explicitly say what the class average is and where you rank. If the university has any questions or is unfamiliar with the system there, they will call one of your references.

[negru]

In any case 1.5 on your scale does not equal 3.5 on the US scale. It's 3.6

But I still don't understand how you get the grades per course. Say you have a test with 10 questions, and you get 8 right. Does that equal a 2, or?

[itsmi]

If I directly convert it, it is 3.625, that's true. But that's not the right way to do it (IMHO). Do you have a reference for it?

The grading depends on the professors. There's no standardized procedure/stepscale. The only thing that "happens" quite often is, that you need at least 50% to pass.

[itsmi]

I guess I finally found the solution: http://www.foreigncredits.com/Resources ... or/Germany
But I have to mention, that it (probably) is only accurate if you add every single course and not the average grade (average grade better than 2.xx is always A -> 4.00 GPA).
Anyway, it ist a little bit funny that if you have a 1 and a 3 it is worse than 2 times a 2 on a german scale. (average is same both times, but the calculator is converting a 1 and a 2 to an A-grade while it is converting a 3 to a B-grade). But it makes sense..

What do you think about that? Might that finally be the solution for my 'problem'?

[kailaash]

http://onlinemacha.com/german-grade-calculator

Check the above link. That's the best germab grade gpa calculator on the internet

http://onlinemacha.com/german-grade-calculator