Convert Chinese Grades to US GPA
100-point scale, 0% to 100%, with 7 bands and a pass mark of 60%.
A Chinese grade
良好 Good
on the Chinese scale — this is what the transcript says
- US GPA (approx.)
- 3.3
- US letter
- B+
- Locally
- Passing
- Band
- 80–84.99%
The conventional mapping used by US admissions offices. It is not an official conversion — no such thing exists — and the receiving institution's own table is the one that counts.
The full Chinese scale
| Grade | Local classification | US | GPA |
|---|---|---|---|
| 90–100% | 优秀 Excellent | A | 4.0 |
| 85–89.99% | 良好 Good (upper) | A- | 3.7 |
| 80–84.99% | 良好 Good | B+ | 3.3 |
| 75–79.99% | 中等 Fair (upper) | B | 3.0 |
| 70–74.99% | 中等 Fair | B- | 2.7 |
| 60–69.99% | 及格 Pass | C | 2.0 |
| 0–59.99% | 不及格 Fail | F | 0.0 |
How the Chinese scale works
The pass mark is 60, not 50, and the practical ceiling is lower than a US reader expects — a 90 average is genuinely exceptional. Chinese universities issue their own 4.0 conversion on the transcript far more often than European ones do; where that appears, use it.
In practice the scale runs from 0% to 100% with 7 named bands. The best is 优秀 Excellent (90% to 100%), and the lowest passing grade is 及格 Pass at 60%. Anything past that is a fail, whatever the number looks like to a US reader.
The reason a single conversion number does not exist is that the two systems measure different things. A US GPA is an average of course grades on a scale where the top is routinely awarded. Most national scales reserve their top band for a small fraction of students, so mapping the numbers proportionally compresses a whole cohort into the bottom half of the 4.0 range. Band mapping — what this page does — avoids that, but every evaluator draws the bands slightly differently.
Frequently asked questions
What is a Chinese 80% in US GPA?
Is there an official Chinese to US GPA conversion?
How does the Chinese grading scale work?
Should I convert my grades myself before applying?
Local classifications follow each country's national qualifications framework or ministry of education grading regulations; the US letter column follows the convention common to US credential evaluation.
There is no official conversion from a national grade to a US 4.0 GPA. Credential evaluators and individual universities publish tables that disagree, most of all near the top of each scale. Treat the figure here as the common convention and the local classification as the fact; the receiving institution's own table is the one that decides.