China Grading System Explained
Percentage (0–100) — 60 to pass
How do grades from China convert to US GPA?
A Bachelor's / first-degree grade — for graduate (Master's) admission or employment
Got a school-leaving qualification instead — A-levels, Class 12, WASSCE, the Abitur? Here's what actually happens to those.
Hover or tap a band to see what it means.
⚠️ The Gaokao score is your entrance exam result — not your university GPA. Use course transcript grades for international applications.
Hover or tap a band to see what it means.
Enter a grade above to see what it means in the United States
You'll get the classification it corresponds to, the range it falls in rather than a single false-precise number, and how firm that answer is.
How does the China grading system work?
Chinese universities use a 100-point scale with 60 as the minimum pass. The Gaokao entrance exam score is NOT a GPA equivalent and must never be used for international applications.
Chinese universities mark out of 100 with 60 as the pass mark, and most transcripts also carry a GPA — a grade point average on a 4.0 or 5.0 scale — calculated by the university itself. The percentage is the authoritative figure; the GPA is derived from it.
Bands are conventionally 90–100 Excellent (优秀), 80–89 Very Good (优良), 70–79 Good (良好) and 60–69 Pass (及格). Each university sets its own percentage-to-GPA formula, so two students with identical percentages can hold different printed GPAs.
Your Gaokao result plays no part in this. It is the national university entrance examination taken before your degree begins, and it says nothing about your degree performance.
⚠️ The Gaokao score is your entrance exam result — not your university GPA. Use course transcript grades for international applications.
What does each grade mean in China?
| Range | Classification | ≈ US GPA |
|---|---|---|
| 90 – 100 | Excellent (优秀) | 4.0 |
| 80 – 89 | Very Good (优良) | 3.3 |
| 70 – 79 | Good (良好) | 2.7 |
| 60 – 69 | Pass (及格) | 2.0 |
| 0 – 59 | Fail (不及格) | — |
The table runs to 100, but in practice China rarely awards above 92. That is the ceiling the converter anchors to, which is why it will never output a grade almost nobody in China actually receives. Why we do that.
What does a good grade actually look like in China?
Chinese marking deflates at the top. A course grade above 90 is genuinely hard to get, and leading universities such as Fudan and Shanghai Jiao Tong set A+ at 95 or above. An overall average in the low 90s already marks an outstanding graduate; a 95 aggregate is effectively unheard of. Admissions offices that see Chinese transcripts regularly understand this — an 85 average from a well-regarded Chinese university is a strong result, not a middling one.
How do WES and other evaluators read grades from China?
WES requires transcripts verified through CDGDC or sent directly from the Chinese institution.
Chinese credentials are normally verified through CHESICC (the China Higher Education Student Information and Career Center), and WES requires your transcript and graduation certificate to arrive by that route rather than from you. Make sure your name matches across every document in both Chinese characters and pinyin — a mismatch is the most common cause of delay.
Credential-evaluator source: UNSW — Education system of the People's Republic of China · cross-checked against Ministry of Education, People's Republic of China · grading data verified 2026-07-24 · how we convert · report an error
Is a degree from China accepted abroad?
Chinese bachelor's degrees run four years (five for medicine and some engineering), which meets the 16-year expectation of US graduate schools without the complication 3-year degrees elsewhere face. You finish with two separate documents — a graduation certificate (毕业证) and a degree certificate (学位证) — and applications abroad normally need both.
What do people get wrong about grades from China?
- Submitting the Gaokao score as a university grade. It is an entrance exam from before your degree, and no evaluator will treat it as one.
- Quoting your university's printed GPA without the percentage. The percentage is what gets converted, and GPA formulas differ between institutions.
- Sending transcript copies yourself. Most US and Canadian universities require verification through CHESICC or delivery direct from your institution.
What grade do you need to study abroad from China?
Each destination below publishes its own typical entry requirement for a taught master's — a one-to-two-year postgraduate degree made mostly of classes. The last column restates that bar in China's own grading terms, so you can hold it against your actual transcript instead of converting in your head.
The last column is a double conversion — the destination's bar onto the US 4.0 scale and then onto China's, so its uncertainty is wider than a single conversion and it is shown as a range for that reason. Treat it as orientation, and check the course page for the bar that actually binds. How this is worked out.
Only destinations whose entry requirement we have read and cited appear here. Several countries publish no numeric bar at all — France admits on the dossier, Japan by entrance examination — and others we simply have not researched yet. An absent row never means “no requirement”.
The last column links the organisations that maintain each country's programme data — we hold none of it ourselves, and none of them can tell you whether you will be admitted. Several countries have no single national directory for postgraduate study at all: master's applications go straight to the university, so the course page is the authoritative source.
How do grades from China compare, side by side?
Each of these sets China against one destination in detail — the two grading cultures, the traps specific to that direction, and the converter preset for the route:
- China vs United States grading system
- China vs United Kingdom grading system
- China vs Canada grading system
- China vs Germany grading system
- China vs Australia grading system
Applying to the US or Canada? Read the WES credential evaluation guide before you order — choosing the wrong report type is the most common (and costly) mistake.
What do these grading terms mean?
- Percentage scale
- A 0–100 marking scale — but the numbers are not comparable across countries: 70% is an outstanding result in the UK and a modest one in India.
- GPA (Grade Point Average)
- The US way of expressing an overall grade, on a 0–4.0 scale where 4.0 is the top — so a 4.0 is roughly what a 90–100% or a First Class would be elsewhere.
- Credential evaluation
- A paid report from an approved company that restates your foreign qualification in local terms, which many US and Canadian universities require before they will assess you.
- WES
- World Education Services, the most widely accepted credential evaluation company for the US and Canada — it converts your transcript into a US GPA that universities will accept.
- Transcript
- The official document from your university listing every subject you took and the grade you got — not the same as your degree certificate, and universities abroad want both.
- Grade compression
- Where a marking culture rarely uses the top of its own scale, so the highest grades anyone actually earns sit well below the theoretical maximum.
Frequently asked questions
Is a good grade in China still good abroad?
Chinese marking deflates at the top. A course grade above 90 is genuinely hard to get, and leading universities such as Fudan and Shanghai Jiao Tong set A+ at 95 or above. An overall average in the low 90s already marks an outstanding graduate; a 95 aggregate is effectively unheard of. Admissions offices that see Chinese transcripts regularly understand this — an 85 average from a well-regarded Chinese university is a strong result, not a middling one.
Is a degree from China accepted for a master's abroad?
Chinese bachelor's degrees run four years (five for medicine and some engineering), which meets the 16-year expectation of US graduate schools without the complication 3-year degrees elsewhere face. You finish with two separate documents — a graduation certificate (毕业证) and a degree certificate (学位证) — and applications abroad normally need both.
What grade do you need to study abroad from China?
It depends on the destination, and the spread is wide. Stated on China's own scale, the typical taught-master's bar works out at roughly: Australia 66–73 / 100, Netherlands 66–73 / 100, New Zealand 66–73 / 100. Across the 12 destinations whose entry requirements we have read and cited, the lowest bar is Australia at about 66–73 / 100. These are typical requirements, not guarantees — selective programmes ask for more, and each figure is a conversion, so treat it as orientation and check the course page.
Can you study abroad with a low grade from China?
Often yes, but be specific rather than hopeful about it. The lowest published bar among the destinations we hold data for is Australia at roughly 66–73 / 100 on China's scale, so a result below that clears no destination on our list on grades alone. Below the bar the route is not closed — conversion, qualifying and pre-master's programmes exist in most countries and are designed for exactly this — but expect to need one, and expect grades to matter more where the programme is competitive. Convert your own grade above to see which bars it actually clears.
What documents do universities abroad ask students from China for?
Chinese credentials are normally verified through CHESICC (the China Higher Education Student Information and Career Center), and WES requires your transcript and graduation certificate to arrive by that route rather than from you. Make sure your name matches across every document in both Chinese characters and pinyin — a mismatch is the most common cause of delay.