Grading Scale Converter

In short Exactly one grade conversion in the world is defined arithmetic, and it is the modified Bavarian formula: German grade = 1 + 3 × (Nmax − Nd) ÷ (Nmax − Nmin), where Nmax is the best attainable grade, Nmin the minimum pass and Nd what you were awarded. German universities use it to place a foreign grade on their 1–6 scale, and it fixes both ends by construction — the top grade always becomes 1.0 and the bare pass always becomes 4.0. So a British 70, the bottom of a First, comes out at German 2.5, and a British 40 comes out at exactly 4.0. Everything else is convention or nothing. "A 2:1 is about a 3.3 GPA" is what admissions offices print; no standards body publishes it. And the one organisation that came closest deliberately stopped: the ECTS A–F percentile bands were removed from the 2009 ECTS Users' Guide because people were using them as a conversion table, and the replacement is a grade distribution table — where you sat in your own cohort, not what the number was. The deeper problem is that scales differ in shape and not just in range. British marking is compressed at the top, where 70 is the highest classification and marks above 80 are rare. The French 0–20 scale reserves its last few points for practically nobody. Dutch 9s and 10s are close to unheard of. A conversion moves the number and leaves the distribution behind, which is why a French 14 or a British 72 so often reads abroad as mediocre when it is nothing of the sort. Use a converted grade to start the conversation with the receiving institution, never to end it.