Converting a Korean GPA to the US 4.0 scale

1. What this page does

Enter the cumulative GPA printed on your transcript along with its maximum and you get a figure on the US 4.0 scale. You can also enter courses one by one, with credits and grades, and let the page work out the average first. Everything is computed in your browser; what you type never reaches our server.

What makes it different from other converters is that it refuses to give you one number. It runs several published methods next to each other so you can see how far apart they land. We cannot decide which method applies to you, because the school reading your application decides that.

It does not predict admissions. Nothing here tells you whether a figure is good enough or where you should apply.

2. Why Korean transcripts split into 4.5 and 4.3

Korean universities fall into two camps. On the 4.5 scale, A+ is 4.5 and A0 is 4.0, steps are 0.5 apart, and there are no minus grades. Hanyang, Korea University and Konkuk all work this way.

On the 4.3 scale, A+ is 4.3, A0 is 4.0 and A- is 3.7, steps are 0.3 apart, and minus grades bring the count to thirteen. Seoul National, Yonsei and KAIST use this one, and its spacing is closer to the US 4.0 scale.

So the same A0 is 89 percent of the maximum on one scale and 93 percent on the other. If you write the GPA without its maximum, whoever reads it cannot tell the two apart, which is why it is safer to write the maximum alongside the figure.

The 100-point number is a separate story. Some transcripts also carry a score out of 100, but the formula behind it differs from one university to the next. One drops five points per grade step, another multiplies the GPA by ten and adds fifty-five, and a third keeps its own lookup table. That is exactly why we do not imitate any university's percentage formula here.

3. The rules inside this app

Picking a scale limits the methods to the ones defined for it. The 4.5 and 4.3 scales get three (the proportional formula, the Korea default row of a US table, and the Korean government scholarship table); the 100-point scale gets two. The government table only runs from 100 down to 80, so anything below that comes back empty. We do not extend a table past where it stops.

The US table publishes a handful of correspondence points and draws a straight line between them. Its default 4.5 row maps 4.5 to 4.0, 4.0 to 3.6 and 3.0 to 3.0, so a 3.8 is read on the segment between 4.0 and 3.6 rather than the one below, and lands on 3.48. Choose your university and the calculation switches to that school's correspondence points, which can differ from the default.

In course mode the average is weighted by credits. Rows with no grade selected and rows with zero credits are dropped entirely rather than counted as zeros, because counting a blank row as a zero makes the average a lie. Change the scale and any grade that belongs to the other scale is cleared.

Rounding happens once, at the end, to two decimals. Rounding along the way piles up error when there are many courses.

The copy-link button hands over the address currently in your bar. That address carries the scale you picked and the values you typed, and it is unpacked by the recipient's browser. Nothing passes through our server, but anyone holding the link can read the grades you entered.

Worth stating plainly: nothing is stored, there are no accounts, we do not read transcript files, and we do not produce the report a credential evaluator would issue.

4. Why every school gets a different number

US universities each publish their own way of reading a foreign transcript. One graduate college prints a single formula, multiply the home GPA by four and divide by the home maximum. Another keeps a table of correspondence points and interpolates between them. A third asks you to recount only the last two years of coursework.

Even within one table the rows differ. A published US table registers about a dozen Korean universities separately: its country default reads a 4.0 out of 4.5 as 3.6, while one university's own row reads that same 4.0 as 3.9. Where you studied changes the answer.

That is how a 3.8 out of 4.5 comes out as 3.38 under one method and 3.48 under another. Showing the spread rather than a single figure is not hedging; it is the shape of the facts.

In practice the question that matters is not which figure is correct but what your school asks for. One programme says recalculating is recommended but not required (the Princeton page listed in our sources), while others name a credential evaluator whose report is part of the application. Reading the application instructions beats any converter.

5. What WES and Scholaro actually do

Both are private credential evaluators that read foreign qualifications against US standards. Their names come up when a graduate school asks you to have your degree and grades verified. This app has no connection to either and does not stand in for their reports.

WES offers a free tool that takes your name and email address and sends the estimate back by email. The conversion values behind it are not published, so we do not imitate its numbers. Tables circulating online as the WES scale could not be traced to anything the organisation itself published.

Scholaro runs a course-by-course calculator and keeps individual scales for many Korean universities on file. It is free for a few runs a day and asks for an account after that. Some graduate schools name its report as a requirement.

The short version: if your school names an evaluator, use that evaluator. This page is where you get your bearings first.

6. Where people get stuck

Sometimes the transcript does not state its maximum. If there is an A+ but no A-, it is almost always the 4.5 scale; if A- and B- both appear, it is the 4.3 scale. To be certain, check your university's academic-information page or the conversion note printed on the back of the transcript.

Some applications ask for a major GPA and an overall GPA separately. Use course mode twice for that: once with only your major courses, once with everything, and report each result in its own field.

Pass or satisfactory grades are excluded from the GPA at most Korean universities. Leaving those courses out keeps your figure in line with the cumulative GPA on the transcript itself.

For a repeated course, enter the grade that finally stands on the transcript. What the university counted is already reflected in the cumulative GPA it printed.

If a figure does not appear, the value is either above the maximum or outside the table. The government scholarship table stops at 80, so anything below it comes back blank. Blank means absent, not zero.