GPA conversion issues ( Indian Applicant)

Launched June 18, 2009
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Hi Sir,

Actually I am a little confused regarding my conversion of GPA into the US scale GPA. Although my college is an NIT( just below IITs) however my particular department ( Production engineering) has a history of giving mediocre grades to students. To cite for example over the last 5 years ( if not more) the maximum GPA from my department has been hovering around a 8.5 or an 8.8. I haven't quite seen a pointer above that. Although this isn't the case in other departments( Mechanical, Computer Science..) where there are people above 9.5 GPA as well. Elaborating a little further, among a batch of about 40 only 8 students or less have a pointer above 8.0 ( my rank would be around a 15 or so and a GPA of 7.0), which made me feel a little different about my particular department. Also this has been a tradition for quite sometime. Actually these combined facts gave me quite a confusion while ascertaining my US scale GPA, which is of course why I turned to the forum. I have heard quite many a times my GPA on plain conversion routes out to a 3.0 on a US scale. I wanted to know your calculation on this.. as an approximation.

What worries me is whether the Adcoms be aware of this fact considering that it applies to only one particular department in our institute? If not how will I address this issue..?Our department has seen admits from London business school, IE business school, Wharton,HEC Paris,Columbia etc but I am still in a doubt as to how far would the rest of the universities know about this particular aspect..? Or rather how would I prove this because neither does my department furnish information that helps Adcoms figure the grading pattern nor has a student been able to provide an additional transcript, for stating our rank or statistics etc from our academics section?

Was wondering on your take on this?

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by mbaMissionJenK » Wed May 28, 2014 7:49 am
Hi there,

Each school assesses your academics within the context of your own country and institution; they do not even necessarily translate it directly to a US GPA as they can look at it within context, and if they do it's generally not a straightforward % translation. So bottom line is do not stress about it, it looks like you have a solid academic transcript and background. Finally-- regarding a specific department, schools do tend to try and assess that as well, but you can also add a few brief statements in the optional essay/blank portion of your application to further provide context if desired. Hope that helps!
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by jayaramgokul » Wed May 28, 2014 8:34 pm
Thank you for you reply and advise.... Hope that this won't be a big issue...