International GPA Converter

International students applying to US graduate schools face an immediate practical challenge: virtually every US university application, fellowship form, and graduate programme admissions portal requires a GPA expressed on the American 4.0 scale, regardless of where the applicant studied. A student who graduated with a 68% from a Nigerian university, a 3.2 CGPA from an Indian university, or an Upper Second Class degree from a UK institution all need to translate their academic record into a single comparable number before US admissions committees can evaluate them against domestic applicants. Without an accurate conversion, students either undersell themselves — entering a raw percentage that appears far lower than the US equivalent — or risk errors that trigger additional document requests and delays.

The second major use case is scholarships. Programmes such as the Fulbright Foreign Student Program, Chevening, Commonwealth Scholarships, and most university-funded international merit awards state their GPA requirements on the US scale. A student from Ghana who achieved 72% — which corresponds to a First Class degree and approximately a 3.9–4.0 US GPA — needs to know this equivalency to assess whether they qualify for scholarships requiring 3.5+. Our Scholarship Eligibility Calculator uses your converted GPA to check eligibility across multiple award categories simultaneously.

The third use case is formal credential evaluation. Services such as WES (World Education Services) , ECE, and Josef Silny and Associates produce official US GPA equivalents from international transcripts that are accepted by universities, professional licensing boards, and immigration authorities. Importantly, GPA conversion is never an exact science — grading cultures, grade distributions, marking standards, and the strategic behaviour of professors and institutions differ enormously across countries and even between universities within the same country. A 65% at a highly selective Nigerian university and a 65% at a UK university do not represent the same academic achievement in context. This is why conversions are always expressed as a range, and why this calculator labels each result with a Confidence rating.

WES (World Education Services) is the most widely recognised international credential evaluation service for the US and Canada. It is accepted by over 2,500 institutions for graduate admissions, professional licensing, and immigration applications, including the USCIS for skilled worker visa categories. WES evaluates international transcripts and produces an official report that converts your academic record — course by course or document by document — into US equivalents including a cumulative US GPA.

WES offers two types of evaluation. A document-by-document evaluation confirms your degree and institution are legitimate and equivalent to a US academic credential — it is used for employment verification and some immigration purposes. A course-by-course evaluation goes further: it translates each course on your transcript into a US equivalent, calculates a cumulative US GPA, and assigns US credit hours. Most US graduate school applications and credential-sensitive immigration applications require a course-by-course evaluation. The fee for a course-by-course WES evaluation is typically $160–$210 plus transcript forwarding costs, and processing takes two to seven weeks.

WES uses a proprietary methodology developed over decades of analysing international transcripts, and it applies institution-specific conversion adjustments based on the historical grade distributions and academic standards of the issuing institution. This means the WES result for a student from the University of Lagos will reflect Lagos-specific norms, not a generic Nigerian national average. This calculator provides an estimate based on the publicly available conversion ranges that WES and major US universities publish — it is accurate for planning and self-assessment, but it will not always exactly match an official WES evaluation.

Other recognised services accepted by US universities and immigration authorities include ECE (Educational Credential Evaluators), Josef Silny and Associates, and members of the NACES (National Association of Credential Evaluation Services) directory. Always verify which evaluation service your target institution accepts before ordering an evaluation — some universities specify WES or ECE by name and will not accept evaluations from other providers.