Portuguese grading system
In Portugal, university and secondary school grades run from 20 (best) to 0, and 10 is the lowest pass. Basic school grades: 1 to 5, lowest pass 3.
Example · Weighted average of 3 courses
Between 17 and 18
muito bom (very good) or excelente (excellent): your school’s or university’s rules decide which grade goes on your record. 10 is the lowest pass.
3 courses, weights adding up to 15.
University and secondary school grades: 0 to 20
Higher education and upper secondary school (years 10 to 12). The words are the qualitative grades a university may print next to a final degree mark.
| Grade | On the transcript | Meaning | Pass? |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18–20 | excelente | excellent | Pass |
| 16–17 | muito bom | very good | Pass |
| 14–15 | bom | good | Pass |
| 10–13 | suficiente | sufficient | Pass |
| 0–9 | fail | Fail |
Basic school grades: 1 to 5
Basic education up to year 9.
| Grade | Meaning | Marks | Pass? |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | very good or excellent | 90–100% | Pass |
| 4 | good | 70–89% | Pass |
| 3 | satisfactory | 50–69% | Pass |
| 2 | unsatisfactory | 20–49% | Fail |
| 1 | poor | 0–19% | Fail |
Portuguese grades and a US GPA
This page gives no US equivalents for Portuguese grades: we found no table for them on Wikipedia or from an official source, and we do not make one up. A US university reads a foreign transcript itself or through the credential evaluation service it names, and its conversion is the one that counts.
Send your grades as they are, with the scale above. When a form asks for your average, give it on your own scale and say which scale it is: the converter’s average does exactly that, weighted by credits when you enter them.
What to know about grades in Portugal
- A course unit is passed with 10 or more, and a result of 9.5 is rounded up to 10.
- The final mark of a degree is a whole number from 10 to 20, and the university may add the qualitative grade (suficiente, bom, muito bom or excelente) to the diploma.
- Final degree marks of 18 to 20 are very rare: at many universities the best graduates finish with 16 or 17.
Sources: Wikipedia, Academic grading in Portugal; Wikipedia, Grading systems by country: Portugal; Direção-Geral do Ensino Superior (DGES), Escala de Classificação Portuguesa.