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What Do Letter Grades Mean?

A letter grade feels universal and is not. An 85% is a B in most of the United States, an A in Canada and a Distinction in Australia, and the GPA points attached to the same letter differ by country and sometimes by school. This guide lays out what each letter means on the main scales, where the pass line sits in each system, and the conversion rule that keeps transcripts from different countries honest.

A report card showing the letter grades A, B and C with a pencil beside it

The US standard scale

Most US schools use ten-point bands: A from 90 to 100, B from 80 to 89, C from 70 to 79, D from 60 to 69, and F below 60. On the 4.0 GPA scale those letters are worth 4, 3, 2, 1 and 0 points. The pass mark in this system is 60, the bottom of the D band, though many schools treat a D as a credit that does not satisfy prerequisites and effectively require a C.

The plus/minus refinement splits each band into three: A- begins at 90, A at 93 and A+ at 97, with grade points stepping by roughly 0.3, so an A- is worth 3.7 and a B+ 3.3. At the top the refinement is capped: an A+ is usually worth the same 4.0 as an A, which is why a perfect GPA survives plus/minus grading but a merely excellent one gets nicked by every minus.

Canada: same letters, lower thresholds

Canadian schools award the same letters at lower percentages: an A typically begins at 85 or 86, a B at 73 to 76, a C at 63 to 67 and a D at 50 to 54, with failure below 50. The pass mark is therefore 50, not 60, and an 80 that would be a B- in the US is a solid A- or A in much of Canada.

GPA conversions follow the letters, not the raw percentage. A Canadian A at 87% converts to 4.0 in the US system even though an American 87% is a B+. Converting by percentage instead of by band is the single most common cross-border transcript error, and it always short-changes the Canadian student.

Australia: bands with different names

Australian universities replace the letters with bands: High Distinction from 85, Distinction from 75, Credit from 65, Pass from 50 and Fail below 50. On the 7.0 GPA scale those bands are worth 7, 6, 5, 4 and 0. The pass mark matches Canada's at 50, and the top band matches Canada's A threshold at 85.

Many Australian universities also report a WAM, a weighted average mark, which keeps the raw percentage instead of banding it. An 82 WAM and a 6.0 GPA can describe the same transcript, which is why Australian applications abroad usually supply both figures, and why our WAM to GPA converter works from the bands rather than the raw mark alone.

Why the same score earns different letters

The thresholds encode different philosophies. The US scale reserves the A for the top tenth of the percentage range and treats 60 as the floor of competence. The Canadian and Australian scales assume raw percentages run lower, because assessments are marked harder, so the bands shift down to meet the scores students actually earn. Neither is more generous in effect: an A is roughly as hard to earn in Toronto or Sydney as in Texas, it is just attached to a different number.

This is also why grade inflation debates confuse across borders. A rising average percentage in Canada does not mean what it would mean in the US, and comparing the two without converting bands first produces nonsense in both directions.

The honest way to convert

Always convert in two steps: percentage to letter on the scale where the grade was earned, then letter to points on the scale you are converting to. Never carry a percentage across systems directly. The Percentage to Letter Grade converter on this site has the US standard, US plus/minus, Canadian and Australian scales side by side for exactly this reason.

One caveat closes the topic: individual schools vary. Some US districts put the A at 92, some Canadian faculties use a 4.33 scale where an A+ exists, and Australian secondary schools use their own bands. The scales in this guide are the widely used defaults, and your institution's published scale always wins over any general table, including ours.

In short

Letters are local currency: A from 90 in the US, from 85 in Canada, and a High Distinction from 85 in Australia, with pass marks at 60, 50 and 50 respectively. Convert percentage to letter at home, then letter to points abroad, and a transcript from any of the three systems reads correctly in the other two.

Last reviewed: November 2026.

Sources & further reading

College Board BigFuture — How to Calculate Your GPA on a 4.0 Scale — The most widely cited US reference for letter-grade to 4.0-scale conversion.
Education Week — grading and assessment coverage — Reporting and research on classroom grading practice for K-12 educators.