How to Convert the Lebanese Grading System to a US GPA (2026)

Most country-conversion guides in this series cover one national grading system that needs translating into a US GPA. Lebanon is a harder case, because there isn't one Lebanese grading system, there are two genuinely different conventions operating side by side across the country's universities, and a single transcript only tells you which one you're dealing with once you know which university issued it. American University of Beirut, Lebanese American University, and Notre Dame University-Louaize already grade on something close to a US letter-grade and GPA model. The Lebanese University, Universite Saint-Joseph, and most other French-patterned and public institutions grade out of 20 with mention classifications borrowed directly from the French system: Passable, Assez Bien, Bien, Tres Bien. Running either kind of transcript through a flat, one-size-fits-all converter produces a number that doesn't match what a formal credential evaluator, or a careful admissions reader, will actually conclude.

Why Lebanon has two grading conventions at all

The split traces back to how Lebanese higher education actually developed. World Education Services' WENR country profile describes Lebanon's university system as a genuinely complex model: French colonial and missionary influence shaped a degree structure built around the French licence-master-doctorat framework, while a separate group of universities, most prominently AUB, was founded on and still runs an American institutional model, down to its credit system and letter grades. Both traditions have operated in parallel for decades, which is part of why Lebanon's Ministry of Education and Higher Education maintains a dedicated Equivalence Committee, established back in 1962 specifically to reconcile qualifications earned across these different systems for official recognition purposes. That committee existing at all, and having existed for over sixty years, is itself a sign this isn't a minor footnote, it's a structural feature of how Lebanese higher education works.

American-patterned universities: AUB, LAU, and NDU

AACRAO, the US-based association whose EDGE platform registrars across the country rely on for country grading references, identifies American University of Beirut, Lebanese American University, and Notre Dame University-Louaize as institutions that award US-style degrees and apply the US system of credits, grades, and degrees rather than a Lebanese or French one. AUB's own registrar publishes the clearest public example of what that actually looks like in practice. For students who entered from Fall 2019-20 onward, AUB runs a standard letter-grade scale with quality points attached, A+ at a 93-100 numeric score carrying 4.3 quality points, A at 87-92 carrying 4.0, running down in standard plus-and-minus steps to F below 60 at 0.0. The university caps a student's reportable cumulative GPA at 4.0 even though A+ itself carries 4.3, which is AUB's own specific institutional rule, not a universal one you should assume applies elsewhere. Students who entered before Fall 2019-20 follow an older, different cumulative-average system entirely, a reminder that even within one US-patterned university, the exact scale on a transcript depends on when the student was actually enrolled.

LAU and NDU are classified the same way by AACRAO, as schools issuing US-style grades rather than a 0-20 or percentage-based result, but neither publishes as complete a public letter-to-point table as AUB's registrar does. That doesn't mean their scales are identical to AUB's or to each other's. If your transcript comes from LAU or NDU, the right move is pulling your own university's current grading-scale definition directly from its registrar or academic catalog rather than assuming it maps one-to-one onto AUB's specific numbers, since even two US-patterned Lebanese universities can define their own plus-and- minus cutoffs a little differently.

French-patterned and public universities: the 0-20 scale

The Lebanese University, the country's main public university, and Universite Saint-Joseph, one of the oldest and largest private universities, both sit on the other side of the split. Multiple independent sources describe this side of Lebanese higher education grading on a 0-20 scale with 10 as the standard pass mark, a convention inherited directly from the French system and shared with French-oriented private schools more broadly. It isn't just a secondary description either, USJ's own admissions paperwork, including the transcript summary form applicants submit, lists every subject's mark out of 20 alongside a general average also expressed out of 20, with class average and rank reported the same way. That's the system actually printed on a real transcript, not a generic conversion table someone built after the fact.

Overlaid on the raw 0-20 number is a set of mention classifications borrowed from French academic tradition: Tres Bien, Bien, Assez Bien, and Passable, roughly in descending order, with results below the pass line generally described as Insuffisant. The exact decimal cutoffs behind each mention aren't perfectly standardized across every source or institution, one widely cited breakdown puts Tres Bien at 16-20, Bien at 14 to just under 16, Assez Bien at 12 to just under 14, and Passable at 10 to just under 12, while another conversion reference draws the line between Tres Bien and Bien slightly differently. What's consistent across essentially every source is the floor: 10 out of 20 as the pass mark, and 16 and above as the top band. Treat the exact decimal boundaries in between as approximate until you've checked your specific institution's own stated scale.

Why a flat converter table gets this wrong either way

A generic online Lebanon-to-US GPA calculator typically picks one scale, usually the 0-20 version, and applies a single linear formula across every transcript it's handed, regardless of which university actually issued it. Run an AUB transcript, which is already reported in US-style letter grades and GPA points, through a 0-20 converter and the output is meaningless, there's no 0-20 number to convert in the first place. Run a Lebanese University or USJ transcript through a different generic percentage-based table, rather than the specific 0-20 mention system actually printed on it, and the result quietly shifts a genuinely strong Bien or Tres Bien into a weaker-looking US figure than it should. Different published Lebanon grading references don't even fully agree with each other on where exactly a mention like Bien starts and ends, which is itself evidence that no single calculator is quietly getting this right behind the scenes, it's picking one interpretation among several and presenting it as definitive.

Not every Lebanese university fits neatly into either category

AUB, LAU, and NDU on one side, and the Lebanese University and USJ on the other, are the clearest, most well-documented examples of each convention, but Lebanon has dozens of universities, many of them private, and not all of them publish grading scales that map perfectly onto either pattern. Some private institutions have adopted an American-style credit framework for how courses and semesters are structured while still publishing their own, somewhat different, percentage-to-letter grading table rather than adopting AUB's specific numbers wholesale. If your own university doesn't appear in either category described above, the safest approach is pulling its own registrar-published grading-scale key directly rather than assuming it must be one or the other, and including that key alongside your transcript when a program allows supporting documentation.

What WES, ECE, and AACRAO actually do with a Lebanese transcript

Most US graduate programs that require a formal credential evaluation point applicants toward a NACES-member agency, most commonly World Education Services (WES) or Educational Credential Evaluators (ECE), the same agencies used for transcripts from most countries outside standard US grading convention. For a Lebanese transcript specifically, that evaluation has real interpretive work to do: identifying which of the two conventions, or which institution-specific variant, actually produced the transcript in hand, then applying that specific system's own grading logic rather than a single generic Lebanon-wide formula. WES has run dedicated training sessions specifically on verifying Lebanese academic documents, a detail worth noting because it signals the agency itself treats Lebanon's mixed, largely private higher-education landscape as a case needing deliberate handling, not a straightforward lookup. AACRAO's EDGE platform, the reference many US university registrars consult directly, separately classifies AUB, LAU, and NDU as issuing US-style grades distinct from the rest of the country's institutions, the same split this guide has walked through. Our comparison of WES, ECE, and IQAS covers how each evaluator works and which one a specific target program is more likely to require.

What to actually submit, in order

• Identify which category your issuing university actually falls into: an American-patterned institution like AUB, LAU, or NDU already reporting US-style letter grades, or a French-patterned or public institution like the Lebanese University or USJ reporting a 0-20 mark with a mention classification, or an institution that fits neither cleanly.
• Request your official transcript along with any grading-scale key or academic regulations document your university's registrar can provide, rather than relying on how a third-party site describes your specific institution.
• Confirm your target program's required evaluator, usually WES or ECE, directly on its own international-applicant admissions page before paying for anything.
• Report your actual result exactly as your transcript states it, letter grade and GPA, or numeric mark out of 20 and mention, on any form that asks before a formal evaluation is complete, rather than a figure run through an unofficial calculator.
• Build in real lead time. Formal evaluations commonly take several weeks, longer during peak application season, and getting a certified transcript issued and translated from a Lebanese university's records office adds further time on top of that.

If the converted number still looks weaker than your actual standing

Even a correctly applied conversion can undersell a genuinely strong record, particularly for a 0-20 transcript landing just inside the Bien band rather than comfortably inside Tres Bien. Where that happens, two things are worth doing rather than accepting the number silently. First, check whether your specific target program evaluates individual course grades directly alongside, or instead of, a single aggregate converted GPA, since strong marks in subjects closely related to your proposed research often carry more weight with an individual professor than one overall figure. Second, our piece on transcript and degree certificate requirements covers when a formal credential evaluation is actually required in the first place, and when a program is willing to look at an original, non-converted transcript directly, worth checking before you assume a converted number is the only thing that matters.

A converted GPA is also only ever one input into whether a specific professor abroad actually takes you on and funds your research off their own grant. That decision rests far more on genuine fit with their current work and the specificity of your outreach than on a single number on an admissions form. Our guide on why research fit matters more than GPA covers that distinction directly: clearing a graduate school's administrative eligibility threshold and winning one professor's personal funding decision are two different tests, and a converted GPA mostly only matters for the first one. GradScoutFunding searches for professors by field and country, confirms they're actively publishing, and drafts a personalized outreach email grounded in one of their real recent papers, every draft is yours to review and send before anything goes out. Your first 100 credits with no card required, and paid credit packs are one-time purchases that never expire.

Common questions