Italy Grading Scale

In short The Italy grading scale is Italian 18–30: higher is better, the best attainable grade is 30, and the lowest passing grade is 18. The Italian scale starts at 18 rather than 0, because anything below the pass mark is simply not recorded — a failed exam leaves no grade at all. Above 30 there is 30 e lode, distinction, which is not a number and cannot be averaged with the others without deciding what to call it. Converting it into German terms is the one calculation here that is actually defined — the modified Bavarian formula, German grade = 1 + 3 × (best − yours) ÷ (best − pass). It is the method German universities use to place a foreign grade on their own 1–6 scale, and it pins both ends by construction: the best attainable grade always gives exactly 1.0 and the minimum pass exactly 4.0. So the top grade of 30 becomes German 1.0 and the pass mark of 18 becomes German 4.0, with everything between spread linearly. Any other conversion, including into a US GPA, is a convention that admissions offices print and no standards body publishes. And the number is only half the story: what travels between countries is the band name rather than the figure, because "insufficiente — fail" means the top of this scale whatever mark it happens to start at. Two systems can put their best students at 70 and at 80 and mean the same thing by it.