French Grade to GPA
Convert a French grade out of 20 to a US 4.0 GPA and its mention.
French marking is strict: 14+/20 is already a strong result and near-20 is essentially never awarded. Conversions vary by institution.
No single official French-to-GPA table exists. WES and each university publish their own conversion — confirm the figure your target institution will use.
French grades run 0–20 (sur 20). A common mapping to the US 4.0 GPA: 16–20 → 4.0 (Très Bien), 14–15.9 → 3.7 (Bien), 12–13.9 → 3.0 (Assez Bien), 10–11.9 → 2.0 (Passable), below 10 → 0.0 (fail). So 15/20 converts to a 3.7 GPA — and because marking is strict, anything 14+/20 is already very strong.
How French grades map to a US GPA
France marks on a 0–20 scale (sur 20), and it is graded strictly. Full marks are essentially never awarded, so a 20/20 is a theoretical ceiling rather than a target. In practice a 14/20 is a very good result, a 16/20 is excellent, and most solid students sit somewhere in the 11–15 range.
Because the top of the scale is compressed, a straight “percentage” conversion (multiplying by 5 to get a mark out of 100) badly understates French performance. Instead, admissions offices map bands of the 0–20 scale onto the US 4.0 GPA and its letter grades, and each band lines up with a French mention — the honour label printed on the transcript.
Worked example
Converting a grade of 15/20 to the US 4.0 scale.
- 1 Take your grade out of 20. The mark on your relevé de notes, for example 15/20.
- 2 Find the band it falls in. 15 sits in the 14–15.9 band, which carries the mention Bien.
- 3 Read off the US GPA. The 14–15.9 band maps to a 3.7 GPA (A−).
- 4 Check the pass line. Anything below 10/20 is not a pass in France and converts to a failing 0.0.
French grade → GPA → mention
A widely-used mapping. There is no single official table — WES and individual universities publish their own.
| French grade (/20) | US GPA | Letter | Mention |
|---|---|---|---|
| 16 – 20 | 4.0 | A | Très Bien (very good) |
| 14 – 15.9 | 3.7 | A− | Bien (good) |
| 12 – 13.9 | 3.0 | B | Assez Bien (fairly good) |
| 10 – 11.9 | 2.0 | C | Passable (passing) |
| Below 10 | 0.0 | F | Fail (not passing) |
Why the numbers look low — and why that is fine
Admissions committees that see French transcripts know the scale is strict, so they read a 13 or 14 as strong, not mediocre. The danger is converting too literally: a mechanical “grade ÷ 20 × 4” turns a respectable 14/20 into a 2.8, which misrepresents the achievement. Band-based tables like the one above exist precisely to correct for that compression.
Treat any single GPA figure as an approximation. French grading is strict and rarely awards marks near 20, and conversions vary — WES uses its own methodology, and each university applies its own table, sometimes course by course. Always confirm the figure your target programme will actually use before you rely on it in an application.