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

Search "Morocco GPA conversion" and most results give you the same one-line equivalence: 12/20 is a B, so divide by 20 and multiply by 4 and you're done. That shortcut gets the easy part right and skips the part that actually matters for a strong applicant, Morocco's 20-point scale isn't used the way its raw numbers suggest. Very few students anywhere on this scale ever score above 16 or 17 out of 20, which means the top of the scale is effectively compressed in practice, even though nothing on paper says so. A straight linear formula treats a 17 as 85% of the maximum and shaves real points off a genuinely excellent transcript. Here's what the 20-point scale and its mention system actually represent, where published conversion tables disagree with each other, and what to submit instead of a calculator's single guess.

The 20-point scale and the mention system, in brief

Morocco grades on a 0-20 scale across secondary school and higher education alike, with individual course or module marks combining into a weighted average per semester, year, and ultimately the degree itself. Once that weighted average crosses certain thresholds, Moroccan universities attach a named honor classification, the mention, printed on the transcript and the diploma: Passable, Assez Bien, Bien, and Très Bien, roughly in ascending order, with an even rarer top distinction sometimes awarded for truly exceptional results. The most consistent cross-source pattern places Passable starting around 10/20, Assez Bien around 12/20, Bien around 14/20, and Très Bien around 16/20 and above, though, as the next section covers, not every published source draws those lines in the same place.

Published mention thresholds don't all agree with each other

This is the detail a lot of generic guides skip past. One widely cited public reference sets Très Bien starting much higher, around 19.5/20, and Bien around 17/20, a noticeably stricter cutoff than the 10/12/14/16 pattern used by several university-specific and evaluator-style tables. A directory built for international scholarship eligibility uses yet another variant, treating 16.0-20.0 as its top band but drawing a separate, lower "conceded pass" line around 8.0-9.9 for borderline cases. None of these is the single official Moroccan standard, because no one ministry-issued table plays that role nationally the way a US registrar's catalog does domestically. If your target programme or evaluator hasn't told you which specific table it uses, don't assume the first one you find online is the one that will govern your file.

Why a straight /20 × 4 formula misreads a strong transcript

The real distortion in a naive linear conversion isn't about rounding, it's about what the scale actually looks like in practice versus what it looks like on paper. A 20-point scale has room for a 20/20, but scores anywhere near that ceiling are vanishingly rare, in practice the realistic top of the distribution sits closer to 16-17/20 for genuinely strong students. Divide a 17 by 20 and multiply by 4 and you get 3.4, a solid B+/A- by US convention, but nowhere near what that mark actually represents inside the Moroccan system, where a 17 is an excellent, Très Bien-level result. That mismatch is exactly why the tables evaluators and universities actually build are banded rather than linear: a mark anywhere in the upper band, commonly treated as roughly 16/20 and above, maps to the full 4.0, not to a proportionally scaled-down fraction of it. If you see a calculator apply one flat multiplier across the entire 0-20 range, that calculator is underselling exactly the applicants it should be crediting most.

Mention or raw average: use the more precise number

Many Moroccan transcripts report both figures side by side, a numeric weighted average per semester or year, and the overall mention assigned once that average crosses a threshold, but the two aren't interchangeable and a guide that only uses one of them is working from an incomplete picture. The mention is a band, not a score: an Assez Bien mention could sit anywhere from roughly 12.0 up to just under 14.0, and two students carrying the identical mention can have real differences in their underlying average that the classification alone doesn't show. If your transcript or diploma supplement prints the actual weighted average, lead with that number on an application rather than converting from the mention label alone, the same way a Ukrainian applicant with both a 100-point score and a coarser 5-point grade on their transcript should lead with the more precise figure, not the compressed one.

What a formal WES or ECE evaluation actually does

Most US graduate programmes that require a formal evaluation for an international transcript point applicants to a NACES-member agency, most commonly WES or ECE, the same requirement that applies to transcripts from most countries outside US grading conventions. Neither publishes one single universally quoted Morocco-specific conversion table that's easy to find in advance, which is itself useful information, it means you shouldn't expect your evaluator's output to match any calculator's number exactly. What the evaluation actually does is interpret your specific institution's grading regulations, your actual course- by-course marks, and produce a US-equivalent GPA an admissions committee can compare against applicants from other countries on consistent footing. Our comparison of WES, ECE, and IQAS covers how each evaluator's process differs and which one a specific target programme is likely to require.

One more mix-up to avoid: your baccalauréat mention isn't your university mention

Morocco's secondary-school baccalauréat also awards a mention using the same French vocabulary, Passable up through Très Bien and even Excellent at that level, which is a genuine source of confusion for an international admissions reader or an applicant filling out a form quickly. The bac mention is computed under separate rules, often weighting continuous assessment differently, and it describes secondary schooling, not your university-level academic record. For a graduate programme application, the average and mention that belong on your file are the ones from your licence or master's transcript and diploma, not from your baccalauréat results years earlier.

What to report when a form asks for your GPA before an evaluation exists

When an application portal asks for a GPA before you've obtained a formal evaluation, report your actual result exactly as your transcript states it, your weighted average out of 20 and your mention, rather than a figure you've run through an unofficial calculator. Many US application systems have a free-text or "other" field built specifically for grading systems that don't map cleanly onto 4.0, and writing your result accurately there, for example "14.6/20, mention Bien," gives an admissions reader more to work with than a converted number that may not match what a formal evaluator eventually produces from the same transcript.

The practical steps, in order

• Request your official transcript and confirm it shows your actual weighted average out of 20, not just the mention classification, for every semester or year on file.
• Confirm your target programme's required evaluator, usually WES or ECE, on its own international-applicant admissions page before paying for anything.
• Report your actual average and mention as printed on your transcript when a form asks, rather than a calculator's converted figure, unless the programme explicitly asks for an estimate.
• Don't substitute your baccalauréat mention for your university-level mention anywhere on the application, they're different credentials under different rules.

A converted GPA is only one input into whether a professor abroad actually takes you on and funds your research off their own grant, their 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. 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. Our guide to funded PhD options for Moroccan students covers the named-scholarship and bilateral routes alongside this one. The free tier gives 100 credits with no card required, and paid credit packs are one-time purchases that never expire.

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