A Python program to take in student transcript data from other countries via CSV format, and convert them to GPAs in the United States' 4.0 grading scale. This is a Python rewrite of jlperona/gpa-converter.
Python 3.6 or later is required due to a usage of open() with Path from pathlib.
This script does not use any packages that aren't provided in base Python as of Python 3.4.
python3 pygpa-converter.py [-h] [-n] input.csv [outfile]
Use -n or --no-header if your data does not have a header row.
Output will be written to stdout if outfile is not specified.
If specified, the file will be overwritten with the final GPA data.
For more help with command line arguments, run the program with -h.
The format of the input CSV file should look like this:
Header row will be ignored.
Student 1 Primary Identifier, Secondary Identifier, Grade Scale, Class 1 Units, Class 1 Grade, Class 2 Units, Class 2 Grade, ...
Student 2 Primary Identifier, Secondary Identifier, Grade Scale, ...
...
The primary and secondary identifiers can be anything. I typically use the primary identifier for ID numbers, and the secondary identifier to indicate multiple transcripts for the same student.
All grade scale conversions are credited to Scholaro, previously ForeignCredits. The appropriate string below goes in the Grade Scale column for each student.
For the list of grade scales that have been implemented, see the conversion README.
Originally I wrote this script in C++.
I didn't know Python very well at the time, but I knew C++.
That program was okay, but it wasn't great.
The base of the program worked just fine, but eventually I decided I wanted to implement overlay scales for the India 10 grade scale (see the section above).
This would have taken a significant amount of work to do in C++, but is fairly easy in Python.
As with any rewrite, eventually I "bit the bullet" and decided to go forward with the rewrite. I'm glad that I did so, as the code is far more readable and less verbose in Python. Error handling and providing feedback to the end-user on what went wrong is so much better here, as well.
This was designed for personal use. Some sort of conversion needs to be done for non-US GPAs in order to be able to make fair comparisons between students attending schools from different countries. In the past, what was done at my workplace was:
- Take student transcript data
- Input it into a web app
- Calculate the student's GPA
- Print out the web app page
This seemed inefficient. This app helps speed the process along.
- Data entry is easier
- It's much easier to use your favorite spreadsheet editor to enter data than using a web app
- Data is saved to CSV
- Parsing is easy
- Can be uploaded to a cloud storage website, rather than printing them out
- Open source
- Code easily checked for errors rather than relying on the programming of a web app
- Data is saved to CSV
- Not the most elegant format to use
- Doesn't fix the time spent on data entry
- It only helps speed it up
- Programmatically determining grades and credit hours would require OCR
This script can be expanded with new grade scales. To see how to add a new scale, see the conversion README.
If you have any that you would like to add, feel free to make a pull request.