Converting Canadian GPAs Forum

[Lawstudent180]

Hi all,

I've done a bit of searching on this topic, but can't seem to find anything helpful/recent. I'm wondering how the LSAC converts undergraduate GPAs from Canadian schools to American GPAs. Any help is greatly appreciated

[BrainsyK]

What school?

[albanach]

Hi all,

I've done a bit of searching on this topic, but can't seem to find anything helpful/recent. I'm wondering how the LSAC converts undergraduate GPAs from Canadian schools to American GPAs. Any help is greatly appreciated

What makes you think your GPA could/would/should be converted? The table to convert letter grades to numeric ones, is readily available and applies to both US and Canadian college level courses.

"LSAC-member schools have selected a common set of numerical values to represent the various grading systems used by US/Canadian institutions. LSAC makes no attempt to assess the value of grades earned at different colleges. "
Source
Source 2

"Transcript Analysis. LSAC summarizes all US/Canadian undergraduate transcripts and presents them in a columned table. "
Source

[Lawstudent180]

What school?

I go to Dalhousie, currently in my third year.

[Lawstudent180]

Hi all,

I've done a bit of searching on this topic, but can't seem to find anything helpful/recent. I'm wondering how the LSAC converts undergraduate GPAs from Canadian schools to American GPAs. Any help is greatly appreciated

What makes you think your GPA could/would/should be converted? The table to convert letter grades to numeric ones, is readily available and applies to both US and Canadian college level courses.

"LSAC-member schools have selected a common set of numerical values to represent the various grading systems used by US/Canadian institutions. LSAC makes no attempt to assess the value of grades earned at different colleges. "
Source
Source 2

"Transcript Analysis. LSAC summarizes all US/Canadian undergraduate transcripts and presents them in a columned table. "
Source

Thanks for the info, big help for me.

I think it’s fairly clear that they could find a system to convert Canadian grades so they could be valued more equally. As for why they would/should, it seems strange to me that me that an A+ at a Canadian university would be valued the same as one at an American university because here an A+ = 90% or higher whereas in the US you need a 98% to get an A+. Not that I’m complaining, but this does seem weird to me. Do schools put less weight into Canadian GPAs because of this?

[albanach]

I think it’s fairly clear that they could find a system to convert Canadian grades so they could be valued more equally. As for why they would/should, it seems strange to me that me that an A+ at a Canadian university would be valued the same as one at an American university because here an A+ = 90% or higher whereas in the US you need a 98% to get an A+. Not that I’m complaining, but this does seem weird to me. Do schools put less weight into Canadian GPAs because of this?

The 90% vs. 98% is a bit of a red herring. The exam can easily be adjusted to accommodate. When I went to school (overseas), 70% would get you an A. That doesn't mean an A was any easier to achieve, and indeed the number of students achieving such grades appears lower than the number regularly achieving an A in many US schools today.

For the most part schools don't trouble themselves with such intricacies. They are ranked by US News based on medians and percentiles and they come from the GPA that LSAC calculates. Therefore the LSAC GPA is what's most important to the school.

[Lawstudent180]

So you’re saying it’s somewhat easier to get higher grades in the US vs Canada? That does make sense. Anyway thanks for the help!

[albanach]

So you’re saying it’s somewhat easier to get higher grades in the US vs Canada? That does make sense. Anyway thanks for the help!

Not so much - just that it's in fact difficult to compare and the comparison is of relatively little value to law schools.

If you're coming from a notoriously bad school, they're likely to just make a mental adjustment for the grade. Otherwise, expect to be treated equivalently to someone with a similar GPA, regardless of where it came from or how difficult it was to achieve.