Russian grading system
In Russia, school and university grades run from 5 (best) to 1, and 3 is the lowest pass.
Example · Weighted average of 3 courses
Between 4 and 5
хорошо (good) or отлично (excellent): your school’s or university’s rules decide which grade goes on your record. 3 is the lowest pass.
3 courses, weights adding up to 15.
School and university grades: 5 to 1
Schools, colleges and universities.
| Grade | On the transcript | Meaning | Pass? |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | отлично | excellent | Pass |
| 4 | хорошо | good | Pass |
| 3 | удовлетворительно | satisfactory | Pass |
| 2 | неудовлетворительно | unsatisfactory | Fail |
| 1 | very poor, rarely given | Fail |
Russian grades and a US GPA
This page gives no US equivalents for Russian 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 Russia
- A 2 is the usual failing grade; a 1 exists but is rarely given, often for not turning up or not answering at all.
- Teachers sometimes add + or − (a 4+ sits between a 4 and a 5−), but this is rare at university.
- Many university courses are marked only зачёт (pass) or незачёт (no pass), with no number, and every course must be passed to graduate.
- Russian degrees have no overall class; a student with mostly 5s receives a diploma with distinction in a red cover.
- The Unified State Exam (ЕГЭ) at the end of school uses its own points: raw task points are converted into a test score instead of a 5-to-1 grade.
Sources: Wikipedia, Academic grading in Russia; Wikipedia, Grading systems by country: Russia.