The Grading Scale Nightmare

[CanuckPAGirl]

Well, when I decided to goto college in the US, I had no idea what I was getting into, until I tried to transfer back.

I technically have a 85-89% average here. In canada thats an A right? Always has been through high school to most colleges. Well here. That merits a B, there are no A+. An A is a 93. My GOD.

Yet when I tried to apply back to UoT I was told that my GPA was not high enough to really consider comeptitive because all tehy saw was a 3.3. Well I know full well that it'd be around a 3.7 in Canada!!!! I know you need an extremely good average to get into enigneering around 90%+ but come on, to get into biology? Give me a break?! If these had been my grades out of HIGH school I'd have gotten in no problem. My step brother got in with an 85% average out of hs!

This really peeves me off, that I have better grades than other people that are getting accepted but I'd get rejected.

It carries over into medical school too. My boyfriend goes to Cornell, he has a B average there but even if he had straight A's, the grading scale they referenced him to told him that his 4.0 would not be WORTH a 4.0 in canada because a 4.0 is an A+ on the scale. Well 99% of his profs dont even give out A+, A is the highest you can get even with a 100%!

I dont get this at ALL?

Am I getting wrong information?

Did any of you goto a US uni and then try to come back to canada for med school?

UGH!!!

So now, I'm starting PA school in Buffalo. I guess I'm US bound for quite sometime. We dont even HAVE PA's in Canada, what except in the military?! Sometimes it seems we're decades behind the US in things! Whether I'll ever goto med school, I don't know anymore. But I just want some answers!

It really frustrates me how the US considered canadian grades on a fair level to their grading system, but Canada just puniches you for going to school in the US!

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[moo]

Well if the grading system for your college is such that an 85-89% merits a B to B+ average, then there really isn't anything you can do about it. I personally have no idea what a 85% at your school translates to at UT. This has always puzzled me that at US schools, it seems like it's so hard to get an A (as you said, 93%) whereas in Canada it seems so easy (80-85%). But I know this isn't the case because otherwise I'd be failing out of med school with my "pathetic" average at UBC as compared to my classmates' "superior" averages. Why don't you just stay in the US for med school? You've been here for a while now, stick it out for another four years and then maybe apply back home for residency since they take US grads for first round now.

 

[JDAD]

As somwone who has gone to hs in BC and then undergrad in Texas. The grading scales are different. It is my experience that an A in canada is from 86-100.
An A in Texas is 90-100. While it is much harder to get a 90 than an 86, school in the states is way easier than in Canada. There are so many "extra credit" points you can earn and then they scale their tests down here so that there are A's on every test. At my high school in BC, if you got a 75 and that was the highest grade in the class, nothing changed, you were stuck with a 75. Here, if a 75 is the highest grade, then that grade is regarded as 100 and that means 65 would be a B, 55 would be a C, 45 would be a D.

Bottom Line: School is much easier in the states then in Canada. I will be applying to both US and Canadian medical schools, I am not sure how things will work out, but we will see.

 

[cholecalciferol]

Grading schemes are different at different colleges and university. I went to University of Toronto where the class average for most 1st and 2nd year science course were in the mid 60's. When I saw the class grades distribution I could not believe how many (roughly a third of the class) received grades below 50% (worth zero gpa points, passing grade is >50%). Since the 1st and 2nd year class tend to be large (>100 students), U of T believes that the grade distribution should follow the bell curve. I have had tests where the class average was less than passing and the profs just bell curve everyone's grades up so that only a few students got A's.
Your college grading scheme reflects a different and easier grading standard so U of T has adjusted it accordingly. But don't let this detract you from achieving your goals. A 3.3 gpa is actually not a bad at U of T and you should be able to transfer. Don't believe what the secretary or registrar tell you. Apply anyways. Don't stay at D'Youville too long if you want to come back to Canada.

 

[coastal]

I've heard that school is easier in the States as well, although I haven't experienced firsthand. My girlfriend's ex went to an Ivy league school with a reputation for excellence, where the students were pampered and prodded along. Papers were returned with suggestions for improvement, and then allowed to be resubmitted! Reputation and reality are very different things, which is why I take all the whining I hear from people from U of T with a handful of salt!

 

[CanuckPAGirl]

I really dont think it's easier here!
I was getting 85-95's in Canada in HS and then in a year at community college, and thats mostly what I've gotten here it just LOOKS worse.
I'll agree that UoT is tough, I've heard that from a lot of people but for people going to York or McMaster? They have an easy ride!
My cummulative GPA ended up being a 3.7 only because of my Canadian grades! Worth so much more here (but I put in less work than I have here) and here my grades appear terrible but are more or less the same numerically speaking.

 

[canuck MD]

I'll agree that UoT is tough, I've heard that from a lot of people but for people going to York or McMaster? They have an easy ride!
QUOTE]

Actually, It's quite hard to get into Mac. Don't forget that with the double cohort last year, minimum entry averages have risen. BTW, getting high grades in most canadian schools is tougher than in the US do to the simple fact that canadian schools are known to "weed out " students in the 1st and 2nd years.

 

[Ramoray]

Yes canadian schools are ALOT harder. Many of them if not all are curved and the number caliber of student who is in university in canada is 10 fold higher than most of the states. It is actually hard to get into university there whereas the states everyone goes to college. and 85-89 average really is a B level average and you shouldnt expect to have a higher gpa than you are getting. I mean if you applied in the states you would have a rough time getting in with that gpa so dont you think its fair that you have a hard time getting in in canada? Plus med schools are ALOT harder there as well.

 

[CanuckPAGirl]

It is NOT hard to get into University in Canada!
I had a mid eighties average and was accepted everywhere!
It's curved here too.
I think its harder to get into a good school in the US, UoT you need mid eighties for most programs...
I had no problem maintaining a high gpa in canada, in fact my year of college in canada is why my gpa is so high!
I was shocked at how much higher the standards are here in the US.

 

[CanuckPAGirl]

And about this my 85-89 average. It's not fair that Canadians who have 85-89 percent averages have 4.0 or 3.7 GPA's and are accepted whereas I ahe the SAME and its the SAME MATERIAL BEING COVERED. I can only say that I've heard of UoT being tough. I'm not whining about not getting into good schools here at all, I'm whining that it's not fair that people who get the SAME GRADES PERCENTAGE WISE CAN GET SPOTS IN UNIVERSITY OVER ME WHEN ITS THE SAME STUFF COVERED.

I found the workload much heavier here than I ever have in Canada and the teachers grade a lot harder. Honestly, most people when I tell them what passes for an A in Canada laugh.

 

[CanuckPAGirl]

I've heard that school is easier in the States as well, although I haven't experienced firsthand. My girlfriend's ex went to an Ivy league school with a reputation for excellence, where the students were pampered and prodded along. Papers were returned with suggestions for improvement, and then allowed to be resubmitted! Reputation and reality are very different things, which is why I take all the whining I hear from people from U of T with a handful of salt!

Some Ivy's heavily grade inflate. Harvard for example is very prone to it. Makes you wonder where the reputation comes from.

My boyfriend goes to Cornell and they DO NOT grade inflate, he has a 3.1 cummulative at Cornell vs transferring with a 4.0!

Another unrelated thing is Canadian community college vs US community college. US community college classes in my experience are pretty much the same as the University ones. Canadain cummunity colleges are a joke, they really aren't at all useful in trying to transfer into a four year.

*sighs*
I'm going to quit my ranting now.

All I can say is from what I've seen from friends attending university in both the US and Canada and my own personal experience with the school system, there's no diference percentage wise, its only the letter your assigned thats different and I think its unfair for the effect on GPA. My cummulative is 3.67 thanks to Canadian community college. When I went here I definitely had to work harder for high eighties and nineties and they were valued much less.

 

[wilfrid]

The actual marks themsleves are of no importance. For example a B could be a 60, as in the UK, a 70, as in Canada or an 80, as in the US. What matters is where you place in the class.

 

[kds]

well i was born in BC and you could get a passing mark if you got a 50 or above but i moved to nashville tennessee when i was 8 and in the states to pass any class you have to have a 70 or above anything below a 70 is a F and a 70 i believe is a D and to get an A it is somewhere between 92-94 may very a little between school's, but i have now moved to north bay ontario and am going to a college here and i can pass by making a 50 or above and an A is 80 or above, i found the schooling in the states to be Much harder In the USA then the schooling in Canada, i mean how hard is it to get a 50 or above..... Not that hard, so people in canada making 70s are doing well in canada but by the usa scale they are just passing anyways thats my take on it.......

 

[PEN15]

I really dont think it's easier here!
I was getting 85-95's in Canada in HS and then in a year at community college, and thats mostly what I've gotten here it just LOOKS worse.
I'll agree that UoT is tough, I've heard that from a lot of people but for people going to York or McMaster? They have an easy ride!
My cummulative GPA ended up being a 3.7 only because of my Canadian grades! Worth so much more here (but I put in less work than I have here) and here my grades appear terrible but are more or less the same numerically speaking.

First of all, you went to a community college in Canada...of course you were getting 80s and 90s. I have a friend who's from New York and applied to Western with a 90+ average from an American high school and was almost denied. The only reason he got to stay in the ACS program was because his father is Canadian. During his first year he was struggling to keep up. He was getting 50s and 60s and was constantly complaining about how hard everything was and how easy the American system was.

Secondly, I agree with the poster who said that it doesn't matter what your grade is, it matters where you rank in the class. Obviously if you score higher than most people in your class you're going to get an even better mark because most universities have a policy to abide to, i.e. only a certain number of people in the class can get As.

 

[Miami_med]

I'm not Canadian, but I figure I'd point this out from a US perspective. There is no such thing as a US system. Education and the grading scale is HIGHLY variable between institutions and even within institutions. Where I went to college, every student (with the exception of some athletes) would likely have qualified to attend University in any country with a University system. Many other universities cannot say this. At my school, I received an A with a 74 in a physics class and then got a B with a 91 in the lab for the same class. Again, highly variable. This is probably why there is so much reliance on the MCAT in the US. If you score over 30 on the MCAT, you probably learned basic science somewhere in the mess.

One of my best friends growing up was born in Sherbrooke in Quebec. He did high school in Canada and the US for different grades. He enjoyed Quebec more, but he didn't find one to be significantly harder than the other. Of course, school was never much his thing.

Just making my contribution.

 

[itek2OD]

comparing apples and oranges. i'm a cdn now working and doin pt study in the states. i've experienced u of t pre med (albeit 15 years ago), and community college in the states. i wasn't aware of the the letter grade difference until my 2nd class this past summer, which was kinda wierd... i went through english getting 80's thinking i had an A, only to be surprised by the B on my transcript!
however, community college in the usa has been much easier than anything i did in my frst 2 years at u of t which really makes wnat to try out a state or private univ here. i think it really just comes down to how they mark the A's (which is all we really care about):

canada A's: 80-84 (A-) 85-94 (A) 95 -100 (A+) harder to get marks
usa A's 90-100 slightly easier to get marks

so you have the choice of doing the same studying and getting a higher mark in the us which equals lower mark in canada but its still an A. a canadian adcom take the ppl in the 85-100 range, the american adcom takes the group in the 90-100 range - ideally, they're pretty much the same. as wilfrid succintly said just aim to be at the top of the class, and it will all work out.
If you're still unhappy about the gpa conversion, u should get an transcript evaluator to check out your numbers and attach a report along with your transcripts so adcoms can get the record straight.

i must admit i would like to do my optom in canada, but i believe i will have to get some amazing marks down here to convince waterloo not to use my app as kindling.

 

[AndrewB]

I really dont think it's easier here!
I was getting 85-95's in Canada in HS and then in a year at community college, and thats mostly what I've gotten here it just LOOKS worse.
I'll agree that UoT is tough, I've heard that from a lot of people but for people going to York or McMaster? They have an easy ride!
My cummulative GPA ended up being a 3.7 only because of my Canadian grades! Worth so much more here (but I put in less work than I have here) and here my grades appear terrible but are more or less the same numerically speaking.

You are just insulting these schools and the people who go to them because you think your getting screwed over, which you aren't. The mean averages in Canadian classes are C's, the percentage doesn't matter. I've heard grade inflation in the states is much worse in fact. I had a couple close friends go to the US for college, one came back because he felt it was a joke and the other one stayed cause he liked being full-time in science and only having courses 3 days a week. These aren't little winky dinky colleges either. And also, don't diss Canadian community colleges either. I went to a regional university college for two years and am now at a large university. I don't think the difficulty is any different, just more people in my classes. I think a smaller college is a great place for a kid fresh out of high school to start, especially in Canada where there isnt as much of a distinction between junior college and university (at least in BC) where they have the regional university-college system. Don't be so bitter towards Canadian universities...if you wanted into a Canadian med school...why'd you go to the states in the first place?

 

[PEN15]

Plus UofT is one of the best schools in the world. Even at Western the average for my science classes hovered around a 65. Maybe there's a discrepancy between college and university in different provinces but here in Ontario, community college is way different than university. I remember tutoring my friend who's at Humber College (really good school in the GTA) in math and some of the stuff he was doing I already encountered back in grade 10 or 11. I have another friend who goes to college for dental hygiene and she's totally kicking ass in her class. My point is, if you want to work in the trade industry then go to college (ontario, might be different elsewhere) but if you want to work in academia, go to professional school, etc. then go to University.

Last year when I applied to professional schools in the states my calculated gpa was so much higher than what I thought it was going to be. So wouldn't it work the opposite way too? i.e. you need a really high american gpa to be on par with a mediocre canadian gpa.

and why did you go to the states in the first place when you can get a top notch education here in Canada?

 

[tupac_don]

Well, when I decided to goto college in the US, I had no idea what I was getting into, until I tried to transfer back.

I technically have a 85-89% average here. In canada thats an A right? Always has been through high school to most colleges. Well here. That merits a B, there are no A+. An A is a 93. My GOD.

Yet when I tried to apply back to UoT I was told that my GPA was not high enough to really consider comeptitive because all tehy saw was a 3.3. Well I know full well that it'd be around a 3.7 in Canada!!!! I know you need an extremely good average to get into enigneering around 90%+ but come on, to get into biology? Give me a break?! If these had been my grades out of HIGH school I'd have gotten in no problem. My step brother got in with an 85% average out of hs!

This really peeves me off, that I have better grades than other people that are getting accepted but I'd get rejected.

It carries over into medical school too. My boyfriend goes to Cornell, he has a B average there but even if he had straight A's, the grading scale they referenced him to told him that his 4.0 would not be WORTH a 4.0 in canada because a 4.0 is an A+ on the scale. Well 99% of his profs dont even give out A+, A is the highest you can get even with a 100%!

I dont get this at ALL?

Am I getting wrong information?

Did any of you goto a US uni and then try to come back to canada for med school?

UGH!!!

So now, I'm starting PA school in Buffalo. I guess I'm US bound for quite sometime. We dont even HAVE PA's in Canada, what except in the military?! Sometimes it seems we're decades behind the US in things! Whether I'll ever goto med school, I don't know anymore. But I just want some answers!

It really frustrates me how the US considered canadian grades on a fair level to their grading system, but Canada just puniches you for going to school in the US!

Hey,

That's true, but they go on the scale set up by your school. Say if you were coming from a Canadian school to American, your 89% would translate to A-, b/c Canadian Schools are considered somewhat tougher. I'll tell you one thing since I did both school systems. It was tough to get a 90 in a Canadian school, in American schools I had 100's before, so my rationale is that tests in American schools are somewhat easier and proportionately 89 in an American school is equal to B in Canadian school.

Also I think lot of courses I had in Canada were essay based, whereas in States they are multiple choice based (way easier).

Also all is not lost, you can still go to med school in states after PA school, just make sure you have a high avg in PA school. PA's make good money, it's not a bad deal. Good luck.

 

[nismodrifter]

I really dont think it's easier here!
I was getting 85-95's in Canada in HS and then in a year at community college, and thats mostly what I've gotten here it just LOOKS worse.
I'll agree that UoT is tough, I've heard that from a lot of people but for people going to York or McMaster? They have an easy ride!
My cummulative GPA ended up being a 3.7 only because of my Canadian grades! Worth so much more here (but I put in less work than I have here) and here my grades appear terrible but are more or less the same numerically speaking.

You got 85-95 in community college and you are thinking that your marks would be similar in university with the same effort? Are you kidding me?

Community college is an absolute joke, it is no harder than highschool (which is also an absolute joke, you can get 90's in highschool without studying EASILY - trust me when I say this). University on the other hand is tough, theres no more slacking off and pulling 90's. The workload hits you like a brick wall in first year and thats when you realize that you have to get your **** together to maintain a competitive average.

Woopdiee dooo you were pulling 90's in highschool, so was everyone else. Never use highschool as a determinant as to how well you will do in unversity.

 

[seany434]

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[seany434]

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[Marquis_Phoenix]

Grading is unfortunately independent of how well a university serves its students.

Case in point: Cornell (grade deflation) versus Harvard (grade inflation)

 

[hp540]

too much whining in this thread.

 

[degoo_]

I didn't read the entire thread, but your problem is a funny one. Usually UofT has grade conversion charts, where they have a specific conversion depending on the school. Clearly your 3.3 whereever is a 3.7 at UofT, so they should consider it as so. In this case for example, the grade conversion could be based on your % mark, not on the translated GPA mark.

 

[lil jon]

too much whining in this thread.

exactly. this thread is pointless, even if you did one year at 4 different schools all you could compare was your experience at 4 of the thousands of post-sec institutions in both countries. Yes, every class with 40+ people in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at UofT has to have an average of C- to B-, usually a C. But apparently UCLA does the same thing. Deal with it.

 

[rskhan29]

By the way, some American colleges are really easy and Im sure some in canada are easy. However there are so many more good schools in the states than there are in canada. I go to virginia tech and i would put it ahead of 90% of the canadian schools. The University of Virginia which is right down the road is easily as good if not better than any school in canada like U of T and McGill. Then you can talk about the ivy league schools and there is nothing that compares in canda

Well, since you went to such an awesome university, you should have no problem getting into a "poor" medical school like University of Sask.!