Didn't get accepted...

[25thhour]

Re: Didn't get accepted...

Hum, at U of C we got letter grades and each letter grade corresponded to a certain GPA, for example, A and A+ were both 4.0. But lots of the courses you need at least a 93-100 to get a 4.0, while some courses 80% got you a 4.0. Every course had a totally different grade scale.

[DossarLX ODI]

Re: Didn't get accepted...

Standardizing is a serious problem in universities. The usual reasoning is that each person has his or her own teaching style, but when it comes to courses professors shouldn't have radically different curriculums or grading. Assembly Language Programming at my university for instance has been given by several different professors, and they all do a completely different curriculum.

Not standardizing also can result in grades that are all over the place. In engineering courses, some professors give students an A if they get 50% of a test (just setting up half the problems, not even solving them completely) and so on. There comes a point where this "different teaching style" excuse becomes bullshit.

[smartdude1212]

Re: Didn't get accepted...

*heavy breathing*

*heavier echoing*

[Reach]

Re: Didn't get accepted...

I've had a score applied to my grades but it never mapped onto the 4 point GPA system.

At Uwindsor my grade was given as a percentage in each class and then a number out of 13. It's not standardized at all which makes it awkward.

UWindsor % is easily converted into GPA. I've seen this question come up a bunch because it gets asked a lot in pre-dentistry circles because everyone needs to know their GPA to know if it's even worth applying.

13 = 4.0
12 = 3.9
11 = 3.7
10 = 3.3
9 = 3.0
8 = 2.7
7 = 2.3
6 = 2.0


The bigger issue with using GPA is in some schools high grades are much harder to obtain than others, and unlike in the US, no Canadian adcoms actually take this into consideration. Your school is never considered. Many people move to 'low tier' universities to pick up higher grades before applying to their grad programs of choice.

The ONLY time this really backfires at all is when schools take preference over students from that particular school/province.

[25thhour]

Re: Didn't get accepted...

A big difference in high school grades for Alberta and BC. I got 96% in every course in Grade 12 in BC, because my school didn't have any finals except for English 12 there was a Provincial worth 40%. Alberta has Diplomas for every grade 12 class, and all my Albertan friends didn't even get straight A's throughout high school, which gave me an unfair advantage when applying to Alberta Universities, as I got a higher entrance scholarship than my Albertan friend who is exponentially smarter than me.