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

Search "Venezuela grade to US GPA" and you'll land on a handful of calculator sites that each hand you a clean-looking conversion table, and none of them match. That's not a sign one of them is wrong and the others are right. It's because no single authoritative Venezuela-to-US conversion table appears to exist in public search results, not from WES, not from AACRAO's EDGE database, which is the usual reference point for exactly this kind of question. What follows is what's actually verifiable about Venezuela's own grading scale, why the third-party conversions disagree with each other, and what to do about it on a real application.

Venezuela's grading scale: 0 to 20, with a few variants

Most Venezuelan universities grade on a scale of 0 to 20, with 20 the highest attainable score. A grade of 10 is the pass mark most commonly cited, roughly the midpoint of the scale, though some institutions or individual courses set the bar higher. A smaller number of institutions use 5-point or 10-point scales instead of the standard 20-point one, which is why the grading legend printed on your own transcript, not a generic online table, should be your first reference point. If your transcript doesn't list one, your university's registrar's office can usually confirm which scale and pass mark applied to your program.

The descriptive bands: Excelente, Sobresaliente, Aprobado

Venezuelan transcripts commonly pair the numeric grade with a descriptive label, and different sources don't fully agree on where each label starts. One frequently cited breakdown treats 16-20 as Excelente, 13-15 as Sobresaliente, 10-12 as Aprobado (the lowest passing band), and anything below 10 as failing. Another source shifts the same labels slightly, setting Bueno instead of Sobresaliente for the 13-15.99 range, and a third splits the top of the scale further, treating 18-20 as a distinct Sobresaliente tier above a separate Distinguido band that some institutions start at 15 and others at 16. None of these are necessarily wrong for the specific institution that published them, they're a sign that Venezuelan universities themselves don't apply one single national standard for the labels, only the 0-20 numeric scale is broadly shared.

Why the US letter-grade conversion tables disagree

The gap shows up most clearly once you try to map a Venezuelan grade onto a US letter grade or GPA point value. A table traced back to the University of Illinois at Chicago, and repeated by at least one other university's admissions page, maps 16-20 to an A, 13-15 to a B, and 10-12 to a C, with anything below 10 failing. A separate table published by the NAIA Eligibility Center uses the same three numeric bands but frames 10-12 specifically as the lowest passing grade rather than a plain C, a subtle difference that matters if a program is screening applicants against a minimum GPA cutoff. A third source treats the whole scale as a direct percentage mapping (20 equals 95-100%, "Outstanding") rather than a GPA table at all, which answers a different question than the one most applicants are actually asking. If you compare three calculator sites side by side, expect them to disagree on a 14/20 or a 12/20, exactly where the bands above don't line up.

What we could not confirm, and why that matters

We looked specifically for a Venezuela-specific conversion table published by WES or listed in AACRAO's EDGE database, the two reference points most US graduate programs actually trust, and didn't find one in open search results. That doesn't mean one doesn't exist internally at those organizations, WES in particular evaluates country-specific transcripts as part of its paid service rather than necessarily publishing its exact methodology, but it does mean no applicant should treat a free calculator site's table as equivalent to an official evaluation. If a specific program asks for your GPA on a US 4.0 scale and you only have a Venezuelan 0-20 transcript, the honest answer is that no single public formula reliably produces the number they're expecting, you need either the program's own internal conversion method (ask their admissions office directly) or a formal course-by-course credential evaluation.

What to actually do with your transcript

• Check your own transcript's grading legend first, confirm the scale (0-20 is standard, but not universal) and the pass mark your specific institution used.
• Use a grade-times-5 percentage conversion only for your own rough planning, never submit it to an admissions committee as your GPA.
• Check whether your target program recalculates GPA internally using its own method, many US graduate programs do this rather than relying on a raw conversion table.
• If a formal evaluation is required, use a NACES-member credential evaluation service (WES, ECE, or similar) rather than a free online calculator, since that's the evaluation type most US admissions offices actually ask for.
• Where your degree included a distinction such as cum laude equivalent or similar, note that these academic honors mentions are typically separate from the numeric GPA conversion, not a substitute for it.

None of this changes the part of the application that actually gets you a funded place: a professor willing to take you on. GradScoutFunding searches for professors by field and country, confirms they're actively publishing, and drafts a personalized first outreach email grounded in their real recent paper for you to review and send yourself, a transcript conversion question doesn't have to hold up the outreach itself. 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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