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

Turkish transcripts already carry a letter grade, AA down to FF, which makes them look deceptively simple to convert. The complication is that there's no single national table behind those letters. Turkey's Council of Higher Education, YOK, sets the overall framework, but the actual percentage cutoffs behind each letter are set by individual universities under their own regulations, which means the same CB or BB can represent a slightly different percentage band depending on which university issued the transcript.

The scale: double letters mapped from a 0-100 mark, set per university

Turkish universities grade coursework on a 0 to 100 scale internally, then convert that mark into a double letter grade, AA, BA, BB, CB, CC, DC, DD, FD, FF, for the transcript. Two real university documents checked for this guide, a doctoral diploma supplement published by Ankara Sosyal Bilimler University and a Cukurova-style grading reference, agree on the same GPA value for each letter: AA is worth 4.00, BA 3.50, BB 3.00, CB 2.50, CC 2.00, DC 1.50, DD 1.00, and FF 0.00, with Ankara Sosyal Bilimler's table adding an FD tier worth 0.50. Where the two sources diverge is the percentage band behind each letter, Ankara Sosyal Bilimler's own scale runs AA at 90-100, BA at 85-89, BB at 80-84, CB at 75-79, CC at 70-74, DC at 65-69, DD at 60-64, and FD at 50-59, and there's no evidence this exact set of cutoffs is a binding national standard rather than one university's own version of a common convention.

That matters because it means a BB from one Turkish university and a BB from another aren't guaranteed to represent the same underlying percentage. YOK requires a minimum cumulative GPA of 2.0 for undergraduate graduation under the overall framework, but the mapping from raw marks to letters, and therefore to that 2.0 threshold, is set at the university level, not dictated identically to every institution.

Be skeptical of aggregator tables that don't come from a real university

Several third-party education-software sites publish what looks like a comprehensive Turkish grading table, and at least one commonly surfaced version checked for this guide contains internally inconsistent details, including a band description that doesn't logically correspond to a 0-100 percentage scale at all. That's a useful reminder for this specific country: a polished-looking table isn't the same as a verified one. Where a real university document and a generic aggregator site disagree, or where an aggregator's own numbers don't hold together, treat the university's own published regulation, or a formal credential evaluation, as the authority, not the aggregator.

Honors designations vary by university more than most guides let on

Turkish universities commonly recognize an Honor and a High Honor tier, typically Honor for a cumulative GPA of roughly 3.00 to 3.49 and High Honor for roughly 3.50 to 4.00, but the actual mechanics behind the designation differ meaningfully by school. Izmir University of Economics applies its honor designation on a per-semester basis and requires at least 25 ECTS credits completed that term, so a strong but lighter-than- normal course load that term wouldn't qualify. Ozyegin University instead applies the designation to graduation GPA, tracked separately by major for a double-major student, and requires a clean disciplinary record on top of the GPA threshold. Atilim University requires both a cumulative GPA of at least 2.00 and a semester GPA of at least 3.00 at the same time, and evaluates its medical school on a full academic year rather than a single semester, a genuinely different unit of measurement from its other faculties. If an application asks you to explain an honors designation on your transcript, naming the specific rule your own university used to award it is more useful than describing the general 3.00/3.50 convention alone.

Credential evaluation: the safer route when a GPA figure actually matters

Because the percentage-to-letter mapping is set at the university level rather than nationally, a generic online converter is working from an estimate, not a verified standard, when it tells you what a Turkish grade is "worth" in US terms. WES publishes its own iGPA Calculator and grade-conversion guidance directly, and that's a more reliable starting point than a third-party table built around assumptions about a single national scale that doesn't actually exist. For a formal evaluation, ECE is one NACES-member service known to evaluate Turkish credentials, generally accepting either the original Turkish-language documents or an English translation. If a program's instructions specifically call for a credential evaluation rather than a self-reported GPA, use a recognized NACES-member evaluator, WES, ECE, or SpanTran among them, rather than calculating your own figure from a table that may not match your specific university's actual cutoffs. Our WES vs. ECE vs. IQAS guide walks through which evaluator fits which destination country and application type.

A standard Turkish bachelor's degree runs four years, built on 240 ECTS credits across eight semesters, a structure most US and Canadian admissions offices will recognize as equivalent in length to their own four-year bachelor's, which helps when a program's instructions are ambiguous about whether a Turkish Lisans degree qualifies as a full bachelor's for admission purposes.

Check your own Diploma Supplement before reaching for a third-party table

Because Turkey aligned its higher education system with the Bologna Process, many Turkish universities issue an official Diploma Supplement alongside the degree itself, a document written in English specifically to explain your transcript to a foreign institution that doesn't know the Turkish system. The doctoral diploma supplement published by Ankara Sosyal Bilimler University is one real example of this: it lays out the university's own letter-grade-to-GPA mapping and percentage bands directly, in English, as an official university document rather than a third-party estimate. If your own university issued you a Diploma Supplement, that document is a stronger thing to cite in an application than any public conversion table, including the ones referenced in this guide, because it's your specific institution's own explanation of its own grading scale, not someone else's generalization about "the Turkish system" as a whole. If you don't already have one, ask your university's student affairs office (öğrenci işleri) whether it issues one, since not every institution automatically provides it with your diploma.

This also matters for a practical reason beyond grading: a Diploma Supplement typically states your program's total ECTS credits and nominal duration in the same official document, which helps a foreign admissions office confirm your degree's length and credit load without needing a separate explanation from you. Pairing your transcript with this document, where one exists, does more to establish your record's credibility than pairing it with a public GPA calculator ever will.

A real 2026 warning, but about the opposite direction

In April 2026, YOK publicly warned against private firms advertising exam-free or "guaranteed equivalence" services for foreign degrees seeking recognition inside Turkey, and urged verification through the government's own e-Devlet platform instead of relying on a private company's claim. That warning runs in the opposite direction from what this guide covers, it's about a foreign degree being evaluated for use in Turkey, not a Turkish degree being evaluated abroad, so don't read it as a statement about Turkish transcripts themselves. The underlying lesson still carries over either way: treat any private service promising a guaranteed equivalence outcome, rather than an actual evaluation process, with real skepticism.

Confirm specifics before you rely on them

The letter-grade-to-GPA mapping (AA through FF) and the 240-ECTS, four-year bachelor's structure are consistently reported across the university sources checked for this guide. The exact percentage band behind each letter, and the precise honors-eligibility rule, are where sources genuinely vary by university, so confirm your own institution's published regulation or a formal credential evaluation before an application depends on either figure.

Finding a funded path once your transcript is sorted

Once you know how your transcript is likely to read to a foreign admissions committee, the next question is usually funding. Our guide to PhD funding for Turkish students abroad covers YLSY and the other named routes, and the professor-funded route sits alongside those: GradScoutFunding searches professors by field and country, confirms they're actively publishing, and drafts a personalized first email grounded in their real recent paper for you 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