How to Convert the Uzbek Grading System to a US GPA

Uzbekistan's grading system looks, at first glance, like a straightforward Soviet-legacy 5-point scale, the same basic pattern covered for Kazakhstan and Russia elsewhere in this series. The real complication is that at least one major Uzbek university doesn't treat the 5-point mark as the final answer at all, it's one layer of a three-part system that also includes a separate 100-point scale and an ECTS letter grade, applied to the same coursework simultaneously. Generic online converters that grab a single number off a transcript and run it through one table miss that layering entirely.

The basic 5-point scale, and what the numbers mean

The common description of Uzbek grading is a 1-to-5 ordinal scale, 5 for Excellent, 4 for Good, 3 for Satisfactory, and 2 or 1 for a failing grade, structurally the same pattern found across several former Soviet republics already covered on this site. Where things get genuinely inconsistent is the exact numeric US GPA mapping. One scholarship-focused guide maps a 5 to a 4.0, a 4 to roughly a 3.0-3.3 band, and a 3 to roughly a 2.0-2.7 band, treating a 2 as an outright fail. A separate, high-school-focused calculator instead ties the same five numbers to flat percentage bands rather than a direct ordinal mapping. Neither source is an official Uzbek government or university-issued standard, and the two don't fully agree with each other on where the real cutoffs sit.

A real dual system: the National University of Uzbekistan runs three scales at once

This is the detail most generic conversion guides miss entirely. The National University of Uzbekistan's own published assessment description states that its grading is built on a 5-point scale, which is then converted into a 100-point scale, aligned with the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS). That's not a single scale with three different names attached to it for convenience, it's a genuine three-layer system: an ordinal 5-point mark, a separate percentage-style 100-point figure, and an ECTS letter grade, each potentially appearing on the same transcript for the same course. A conversion approach built around reading only the 5-point number, or only the 100-point number, in isolation risks missing context the other two figures were specifically designed to carry.

The degree structure itself has been a moving target

Part of why conversion tables for Uzbekistan disagree so much is that the underlying degree structure has genuinely been in flux, not just the grading scale layered on top of it. Academic research on Uzbekistan's own Bologna transition describes a two-tier bachelor's and master's structure, with ECTS reportedly adopted across all Uzbek universities by 2021. Sources disagree on the exact bachelor's length during the transition: one more recent account describes bachelor's programmes running at least three years, carrying at least 180 ECTS credits, while an older source instead describes a 4-year bachelor's carrying 240 credits, closer to the pre-reform structure. A master's typically runs one to two years, variously reported at 90 or around 120 ECTS depending on the source and specialty. The doctoral stage sits outside this bachelor's-master's cycle entirely, structured as a separate PhD stage followed by a further Doctor of Science (DSc) stage, each reported at around three years. On top of the structural reform itself, Uzbek regulators have kept actively revising university rules into 2025 and 2026, including new restrictions on assigning students to non-academic work. A system this actively under reform is part of why no single, settled conversion table has caught up with it yet, and why checking your specific university's current published structure matters more here than for a system that's been stable for decades.

This also has a direct practical consequence depending on when you studied. If your transcript predates the fuller ECTS rollout, it may reflect the older 4-year, 240-credit bachelor's model; if it's more recent, it may instead reflect the newer minimum-3-year, 180-credit structure some sources describe. The two aren't simply the same degree measured differently, they represent genuinely different programme lengths and credit totals, which matters if a US programme is comparing your total credit hours against its own transfer or equivalency rules rather than just your final grade. Naming your actual years of study and graduation year, not just your degree title, helps a reader place which version of the system produced your specific transcript.

One document worth specifically asking your Uzbek university for, if you haven't already received one: a Diploma Supplement. At least one university, the University of World Economy and Diplomacy, issues a standardized Diploma Supplement document alongside the degree itself, a format designed specifically to describe your qualification, grading scale, and credit structure in terms an international reader can actually interpret, broadly similar in purpose to the European-style diploma supplements issued across Bologna-aligned systems. If your own university issues one, it's generally a more reliable, official description of your specific grading scale than any third-party conversion table, worth requesting directly from your registrar if you don't already have a copy.

No official Uzbekistan-wide table exists, as far as we could confirm

We found no WES-published country page specifically for Uzbekistan, and no Uzbek ministry-level conversion standard confirmed in the research for this guide. The closest institution-level official source we located, a Scholaro profile, covers a single specific university, Tashkent State Pedagogical University, and explicitly frames that university's approach as Russia/USSR-style rather than presenting it as a nationwide Uzbekistan standard. What exists instead is a mix of institution-specific descriptions like the National University of Uzbekistan's three-layer system above, and several independently built third-party calculator tables that don't fully agree with each other on exact numeric bands. Treat any single generic table as a starting approximation, not a settled national standard.

Why a linear conversion specifically gets flagged as risky here

A grade-conversion guide built for Dutch university admissions specifically cautions against converting Uzbek grades through a simple linear formula, recommending instead that evaluators read a grade in the context of the specific issuing institution, since more selective Uzbek universities can grade more strictly than regional ones. That's a meaningfully stronger caution than the generic "scales vary a bit by school" language attached to many other countries in this series, and it argues for leaning on an actual credential evaluation rather than a quick online calculator whenever a formal application specifically requires a converted figure. Our WES vs. ECE vs. IQAS guide covers how to choose between the major NACES-member evaluators depending on your target programme.

Document-by-document vs. course-by-course: which evaluation a graduate application actually needs

If you do need a formal credential evaluation, it's worth knowing that evaluators typically offer two meaningfully different report types, and picking the wrong one wastes both time and money. A document-by-document report confirms your degree's overall equivalency, roughly "this Uzbek bachelor's degree is comparable to a US bachelor's degree," without breaking out a course-level GPA. A course-by-course report goes further, assigning a US-style grade and credit value to each individual course on your transcript, which is what most graduate admissions committees and funding applications actually require, since they need an overall GPA figure to compare against their own cutoffs, not just a general degree-level confirmation. Given how layered Uzbekistan's own 5-point, 100-point, and ECTS system already is, a course-by-course evaluation is the version worth requesting if a programme asks for a converted GPA at all, check the specific requirement on your target programme's application instructions before ordering either report.

What to write in a cold email instead

Skip the self-converted GPA and state your actual record as your transcript reports it, including which of the three scales the figure comes from, for example "average grade 4.6/5.0 (Uzbek 5-point scale), [degree] from [university], graduated [year]," or the equivalent 100-point figure if that's what your specific university's transcript foregrounds. Naming your specific institution matters more here than for many other countries in this series, since Uzbekistan genuinely doesn't run one single, universally applied national table the way some countries do. If you're applying for Uzbekistan's own outbound government scholarship rather than converting a grade for a foreign application, our guide to PhD and Masters funding for Uzbek students abroad covers the El-Yurt Umidi Foundation's eligibility filters, including its own GPA-adjacent requirements.

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