Hi,
I m still kind of confused with the mcmaster grading system, so i just wanted to get clarification from some people.
I was just looking at some masters program at Mac and it said for admission requirement: must have completed a four-year honours university degree with a B+ average (75-79% equivalent to a McMaster 8.5 grade point average) in the final year.

I always thought that B+ was supposed to be 9, because that's what it says on the chart. Are they rounding it up? So in that case is 9.5 equivalent to A- ?

It would be great if someone can clear up this for me. Thanks in advance

9 is 77-79%
8.5 is 75-79%

That's the only difference I notice.

yeah, 8.5 is between 75% and 79%.

http://registrar.mcmaster.ca /calen...-13/pg145.html

8 = B = 73-76
9 = B+ = 77-79

Doing pure math, midpoint would be... 75-77.5...

Yea no clue on this policy....

ya it's so weird, i don't get this system at all. technically what Leeoku should be true mathematically, but according to what the website says, im just not sure...
I see on other universities, when they post the grade requirement, they just use the letter grade.
So then what's 8.5? B or B+ ?

Originally Posted by jake0405

ya it's so weird, i don't get this system at all. technically what Leeoku should be true mathematically, but according to what the website says, im just not sure...
I see on other universities, when they post the grade requirement, they just use the letter grade.
So then what's 8.5? B or B+ ?

8.5 is neither B or B+.

They list the numeric GPA because you calculate your average mathematically (using numbers), not with the letter grades.

McMaster also considers a 9.5 to be equivalent to an 80 average (for Dean's List and stuff). This is because the 12-point scale doesn't convert evenly from percentages because the 100-percent scale isn't divided equally into the 12 grade points - for example, a 9 consists of 77-79.9% (roughly 3 percentage points) while a 10 consists of 80-84.9 (5 percentage points) and a 12 is 90-100% (ten percentage points).

You will never know your exact average in percent anyways, so the percent conversion from 8.5 is totally moot. It's just giving you a general idea.

So you are saying that 9 and 9.5 has no difference since it's in a range?
That seems kinda unfair.. and i see that in conversion to 4.0 grading system, difference between 9 and 10 is 3.3 and 3.7. So in this case 9.5 means 3.5?

Originally Posted by jake0405

So you are saying that 9 and 9.5 has no difference since it's in a range?
That seems kinda unfair.. and i see that in conversion to 4.0 grading system, difference between 9 and 10 is 3.3 and 3.7. So in this case 9.5 means 3.5?

No, I'm not saying that 9 and 9.5 have no difference. I don't know where you got that from in my post?

Decimals on the 12-point system can't be converted to other grading systems (such as percent or 4-point system). Mac has decided that a CA of 9.5 is roughly equivalent to 80% for the purposes of the Dean's list (80% is typically used as the cutoff for honours lists).
To convert your CA from 12-point to 4-point, you need to convert each grade individually and average them out. You can't go directly from your 12-point average to a 4-point average.

Mac should just go with the 4.0 scale. This stuff makes it so complicated.