International Student:How do schools look at your academics?

Hardikbheda wrote:How do schools look at / judge your academics if you have your undergraduate degree from India?
To be more specific here is my own example.

I have done my undergraduate degree in Manufacturing/Production Engineering in India.
I did pretty well at my academics, managing to to be a second ranker in the final year, in the University. (university of Pune, Maharashtra, India. Now, the university that I did my degree in has a percentage system and not a GPA system. Furthermore, the grading system is such that, securing anything above 75% marks are considered to be a feat in itself. On the other hand, there are many universities in India where the average grade is 80% marks.

So my question is that how would a B School fairly asses my profile of 74% marks against an below average student from another university with 74% marks.

I know its kind of a lengthy question but it always had confused me.

Thanks in advance for the reply.

Cheers

Hi Hardik,

We assist a lot of MBA applicants and many of them have this question.
B schools in US/ UK generally are aware that apart from IIT's and few other institutes GPA system is not prevalent in India.

But adcoms of most of the top schools are smart enough to have a general list of how much toppers get and how much average students get in terms of percentage in say college ABC in India. This is taken into consideration along with the rank of your undergrad college. e.g. a 7 GPA applicant from IIT Delhi will be considered better in terms of academics when compared to a topper from a private university engg college.

This knowledge is generally derived through discussions with a few alums of these colleges who have joined the B schools.

This is because many applicants apply from India and hence they need to be judged fairly. That said this is not fool proof and thats where the importance of GMAT increases as GMAT is a common scale.

Hope that helps.

Apphelp Team