Foreign GPA Forum

[RedTop]

I don't know if this is the right board to post this question, sorry if it's not.

My girlfriend is applying to law school. She won't take the LSAT until December, and doesn't want to wait until mid-January to start applying, so she wants to get her applications ready now.

Here's the rub. Her GPA at one of the best universities in Canada was 3.07. However, from what I can tell, they grade much tougher up there. In particular:

I went to Georgetown. My GPA was 3.01. I had a class rank of 368 out of 505. In other words, my 3.01 was well below average. (Guess what? I didn't go to grad schoo. But that's another story.)

Her transcript lists not only her grade but the average grade in the class. Of the 21 courses where this information appears, she was above the average for the class 14 times, below 5 times, and equaled the average twice. This suggests that her GPA was at least modestly above average.

Does anyone have an idea whether this will be at all persuasive?

In a related vein, what's the best way to let the committee know that she did in fact go to a good university? If you apply from the USA, every committee is going to know that the Ivies are good and Georgetown is OK and East Podunk College sux. Are committees going to know anything about Canadian schools?

[bk1]

AdComms have likely seen hundreds if not thousands of Canadian applicants before. They don't really care where you got your GPA, just what it is. I doubt any addendum is going to convince them to look at her GPA as anything but a 3.07.

[09042014]

Her 3.07 Canadian GPA counts.

[Adu]

I don't know if this will help you in any way, but I came to the USA with French transcripts and I got them translated through an office in Miami. Since Canada and the USA are so close maybe they don't require any translation. I would think that they take it in consideration. Many web sites say that law school comittees do look at your GPA and what school you come out of in order to compare students.

Hope I helped

[bk1]

US and Canadian GPA's are counted. Everything else isn't.

[094320]

..

[caven]

I am currently at a Canadian University on the east coast. I can tell you that a GPA of 3.07 in Canada is considered different by different schools. unfortunately it is not standardized as it probably should be.

http://careers.mcmaster.ca/students/edu ... sion-chart

this is a conversion chart. and it might help. But it shows more the way a school would at transcripts from another Canadian school.