How to Convert the Iranian Grading System to a US GPA

Most guides to converting an Iranian GPA stop at the math: here's the 0-20 scale, here's a conversion table, done. That math is genuinely unsettled, more than one legitimate-looking table circulates online, and no single Iranian authority has published a binding standard. But for an Iranian student weighing a US graduate application in 2026 specifically, the GPA conversion is only one part of a bigger picture that most generic calculator sites don't mention at all: the current US visa situation for Iranian nationals, which changes whether converting that GPA for a US application is even the right move to be spending time on right now.

The 0-20 scale, and why the pass mark depends on your level of study

Iranian higher education grades on a 0 to 20 scale rather than the percentage or letter systems more familiar to US readers. At the undergraduate level, 10 out of 20 is generally the floor for a passing grade. Graduate study runs stricter: a minimum passing grade of 12 per course is typically required at the master's level, and graduating generally requires a cumulative GPA of 14 out of 20. If you're converting a graduate-level transcript, applying the lower undergraduate pass threshold will misread your record, check which floor actually applies to the specific transcript in front of you.

No single official conversion table, and the two that disagree with each other

Here's the part most calculator sites gloss over: no Iranian ministry publishes one official 0-20-to-4.0 conversion standard. Because no dedicated national guideline exists, some evaluators and reference guides default to the conversion convention built for French-patterned grading systems, a reasonable fallback given the historical French influence on Iran's university structure, but a fallback nonetheless, not a purpose-built Iranian standard. The result is that two commonly cited tables genuinely disagree with each other. One sets the top band, a 4.0 (A), at 18 to 20, with 15 to 17.99 as a 3.0 (B) and 12 to 14.99 as a 2.0 (C). A separate table instead places the A band starting at 16, with B running 14 to 15. Both show up in searches as "the" Iranian conversion scale, and a specific university-level table can differ from both. Don't treat either table as authoritative; a formal credential evaluator will apply its own internal methodology to your actual transcript rather than matching either one exactly.

What a formal evaluation actually requires: MSRT authentication first

If your target program requires a formal NACES-member evaluation, confirm the prerequisite steps before you submit anything. At least one guide handling Iranian credentials states that authentication through Iran's Ministry of Science, Research and Technology (MSRT) is a prerequisite step before a NACES evaluator like WES or ECE will process the credential at all, and that the full process, authentication plus evaluation, can take several months. A related risk worth knowing about directly: if the institution that issued your degree isn't on MSRT's recognized list, its degrees reportedly will not pass NACES evaluation, regardless of how strong the transcript itself looks. Confirm your specific university's MSRT recognition status well before application deadlines, not after submitting your evaluation request.

A separate, specific documentation trap applies to graduate degrees: without proper thesis documentation included in your submission, at least one source warns that WES may classify the credential as a Graduate Diploma rather than a full Master's degree, a meaningfully different classification for both admissions review and funding eligibility. If your degree involved a thesis, make sure that documentation is part of what you submit, not just your final grade transcript.

On the degree-mapping side, a four-year Karshenasi is generally treated as the US bachelor's equivalent, though medicine, dentistry, and some other fields run as longer integrated professional programs that don't map onto a simple bachelor's-plus-graduate-degree structure; flag that distinction explicitly if your own credential falls into one of those integrated programs. Graduate admissions committees, funding panels, and most professional licensing boards generally want the course-by-course version of an evaluation report rather than the simpler document-by-document version, since course-by-course is the type that actually produces a usable converted GPA figure rather than just confirming overall degree equivalency.

One further wrinkle specific to GPA calculation itself: per guidance attributed to Iran's Ministry of Science, Research and Technology, a failed course grade should not be counted toward your GPA once you've ultimately passed that course on a later attempt. If a converted figure you receive looks like it's penalizing an early failed attempt at a course you went on to pass, that's a legitimate point to raise with the evaluator rather than something to simply accept as final.

The part generic guides skip entirely: the 2026 US visa situation

This is genuinely the biggest gap in most existing guides to this topic, and it's not a minor footnote. The US State Department's own published notice confirms that Presidential Proclamation 10998, effective 1 January 2026, fully suspended visa issuance, including F-1 student visas, to nationals of a named list of countries that includes Iran, building on an earlier restriction under Proclamation 10949 that had already barred new Iranian visas, F-1 included, from June 2025. By its stated terms, the proclamation applies to foreign nationals outside the United States on its effective date who don't already hold a valid visa; it does not revoke a visa that was already issued before that date. This is exactly the kind of fast-moving policy area where a specific snapshot can go stale quickly, confirm the current status directly on travel.state.gov before making any decisions based on this page, but don't skip checking it. Converting a GPA and assembling a strong US application is wasted effort if a visa to actually use the resulting admission isn't currently obtainable, and it's exactly the step a generic GPA-calculator page has no reason to ever mention.

If the current US visa picture changes your own calculus, the GPA-conversion groundwork above still transfers directly to other destinations. Canadian and UK admissions, and major scholarship databases, generally rely on the same category of NACES-equivalent credential evaluators, and our guide to WES vs. ECE vs. IQAS covers how those evaluators differ and which one a specific program is likely to want.

What to write in a cold email instead of a converted number

Skip the conversion math in your actual outreach and state your record exactly as your transcript shows it: for example, "cumulative average 17.2/20, [university], graduated [year]," naming the 0-20 scale explicitly rather than presenting a self-converted 4.0-scale number a professor has no way to verify. A professor reading a cold email is not the audience for a formal credential evaluation anyway; that's for the admissions office or funding panel reviewing your application later. Our regional neighbor guide on converting the Iraqi grading system covers a similarly under-standardized conversion problem, worth a look if you're weighing how much detail to include either way.

GradScoutFunding searches for professors by field and country, confirms they're actively publishing, and drafts a personalized first email grounded in one of their real recent papers, every draft is yours to review and send yourself; it never sends anything automatically. The free tier gives you 2 credits with no card required, and paid credit packs are one-time purchases that never expire.

Common questions