collageSince 1890, the French baccalauréat exam, required to receive a high school diploma, has traditionally scored students on a scale (Barème) of 0-20, as do most secondary school and university classes. Although the traditional scale stops at 20/20, French baccalauréat results can be higher than 20/20 due to supplementary “options”. French universities traditionally grade in a stricter way than secondary schools, which means that students are unlikely to receive marks as high as they did in secondary school. Famously, in Preparatory Class for ‘Grandes Écoles’ (CPGE), an optional 2-4 year preparation for the most elite universities in France, students are graded so harshly that class ranking, rather than individual grades, usually reflects an individual’s performance, especially when comparing the grades to secondary or university grades. Often, an average grade of 7-8 in Preparatory Class for ‘Grandes Écoles’ (CPGE) can be considered as a satisfactory grade if the best grade in the class is only a 12.
On the diplôme national du brevet, awarded for passing the 10th year exam (9th grade), and also on University of Paris, Sorbonne transcripts, scores above 12 on the scale of 20 confer the following mentions (honors):
In recent years, the French government began to explore possible conversion of the 0-20 grading scale to 0-4 or 0-5. Since 2008, the College Gabriel-Séailles, a middle school in southern France, has abolished grading altogether.
Primary schools generally use a 10-p o i n t grading scale or a letter grade.
The European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) scale is gaining popularity in the post-secondary education system since it is the standard for comparing study performance throughout the European Union. The GPA grading scale is becoming more and more common as well since it eases the comparison with American students.
Some Grandes écoles use “exotic” systems, like Ecole Centrale de Lille, which uses a three-letter scale system
- A: Excellent
- S: Satisfactory (satisfaisant)
- I: Fail (insufficient)
There is no exact formula for converting scores between the French 0–20 scale and American grades,[23] and there are several reasons why the systems are not entirely commensurate. For instance, some American institutions use Rank Based Grading and grading curves, that is, shifting the grades of a class so that the highest scores align with the highest grades on the grading scale and the lowest scores align with the lowest grades on the scale or aligning the median achieved score within the class to a fixed point on the grading scale. Likewise, some American institutions use weighted grades, wherein grades for advanced classes are augmented in the official transcripts to compensate for the difficulty of the classes. French schools use neither,[24] the result being that in a university, “perfect” 20s are never given,[25] grades over 14 are extremely rare, and scores over 12 indicate that the student is in the top 10–20% of the class.[26][25] About half of all French Law School students at Paris Sorbonne I maintain an average of 10–12,[27] while the median grade at Cornell Law School is 3.35(B+),[28] at Duke University School of Law is 3.30 (B+),[29] at UC Davis School of Law is 3.25–3.35 (B/B+),[30] and at Columbia Law School the median GPA is estimated at 3.4(B+).[31]
| French Grade | World Education Services Scale[34][32] | CampusFrance Scale[27] | University of Minnesota Scale[25] | l’École Nationale Supérieure de Géologie Scale[35] |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18–20 | A | A+ | A | 4 (A+/A) |
| 17–17.9 | A | A+ | A | 4 (A+/A) |
| 16–16.9 | A | A+ | A | 3.7 (A–) |
| 15–15.9 | A | A | A | 3.7 (A–) |
| 14–14.9 | A | A | A– | 3.5 (B+) |
| 13–13.9 | B+ | B | B+ | 3.2 (B) |
| 12–12.9 | B+ | B | B+ | 3.0 (B) |
| 11–11.9 | B | C | B | 2.7 (B–) |
| 10.5–10.9 | B– | C | B– | 2.7 (B–) |
| 10.1–10.4 | C+ | C | B– | 2.7 (B–) |
| 10 | C | C | B– | 2.7 (B–) |
| 9–9.9 | C– | D | C+ | 2.5 (C+) |
| 8–8.9 | D | D | C | 2.5 (C+) |
| 7–7.9 | F | F | C– | 2.2 (C) |
| 6–6.9 | F | F | D+ | 2.2 (C) |
| 5–5.9 | F | F | D | 2.2 (C) |
| 4–4.9 | F | F | F | 2.2 (C) |
| 1–3.9 | F | F | F | 2.0 (C) |
| 0-0.9 | F | F | F | 2.0 (C) |
french grading system conversion to american
French and American grading both use scales based on multiples of 10, so logically speaking, transferring grades from one system to the other should be simple.
Nothing could be further from the truth, however.
Not only are the values assigned to the scales entirely different (the French 10/20 is a far cry from the American 50/100), but the diversity and odd weighting of the U.S. system—which varies from one state/district/school to the next and essentially only occupies the upper end of the grading scale—associated with the subjectivity and variability of grading in the French system, all make it incredibly hard to find precise correspondences between the two.
Yet students, translators, and university officials are often asked to “translate” grades from the other system for school transcripts or as part of university exchanges. Doing so is never ideal, and in practice, the result is seldom satisfying, but it is also frequently unavoidable.
To explain why this task is so challenging and attempt to surmount some of these difficulties, what follows is a brief primer on the differences between French and U.S. grading, along with an attempt at finding an equivalent for grades between the two system.
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