How US universities look at the GPA in Candian universities

[KevinP939]

Hi, this is my first time posting in this forum. Hopefully, someone can answer my question. First off, let me talk a little bit about myself. I have recently obtained my undergraduate degree of economic from a decent b-school in Canada ( not the top-tier school like Rotman and Schulich, but i would say my school is in 2nd tier and kind of well known in Canada). My overall GPA is "B", which is between 73% -76%, and my last two year GPA is " B+", which is between 77% -79%. With this GPA, I am eligible to apply for most of the Canadian MBA program. However, I want to go to some good American school for my MBA ( not Ivy school like Harvard or Standard, but some well known school like UCLA or Duke).

Although my grade is not very high, I still have overall GPA of 3.0 and GPA of 3.3 in the last two year, basing on Canadian GPA scale. However, I have noticed that the GPA scale in the US is different from the one in Canada. Covering my GPA based on the percentage, I only have the GPA of 2.0, which is an unacceptable grade for almost all the MBA program.

My questions is how those universities in the US look at my GPA. Will they covert my GPA merely looking at the percentage? If that is the case, it will be very hard to most of the Canadian students to apply MBA in the US, considering my grade is not a bad grade in the Canadian university. Thanks in advance for helping.

[mbaMissionKate]

Hi there,
Thanks for your question! B-schools are very familiar with applicants from many different countries including Canada so they will know how to interpret your GPA. They will not convert it to a US scale, and you will not need to either, you will report it as it is on your transcript. They will also review your transcript in detail and see the sorts of challenging courses you took and also see that your GPA increased the last 2 years which is great to see an upward trend. So overall, it sounds like you have good grades and high enough to prove you can handle a top program. But as you point out, your grades may not look stellar compared to other applicants from top schools with higher GPAs, so having a strong (ideally above average) GMAT score will improve your chances a lot.
Good luck, and keep us posted with any other questions you have!
Kate