Permanent Resident with a Foreign Bachelor's degree

[jafll04]

Hello. As the title suggests, I recently migrated to the US and hold a foreign Bachelor's degree in Psychology but I am in the process of completing my prerequisites here in California. I had ECE evaluate my transcript and my cGPA is 3.4. My question is, is there anyone here in the same situation as me? Will my evaluated GPA be the same when I input it in CASPA? I hear a lot of stories where their GPA was much lower compared to what they have in their transcript. I have used the GPA calculator provided by CASPA but I don't know if it applies to foreign credits.

[roundabout]

Hi I am not in the same position as you but figured I would do my best to point you in the right direction. First look at this link and read through it: https://help.liaisonedu.com/CASPA_Applicant_Help_Center/Sending_Your_Official_Transcripts_and_Test_Scores_to_CASPA/Sending_Official_Transcripts_to_CASPA/Foreign_and_French-Canadian_Transcripts

Second, if you have not yet determined what schools you plan to apply for, being that you are a foreign graduate I would do this as soon as possible. Many programs will not allow you to apply with a foreign degree at all. But there are some that will and I would find out which ones you are interested and call them and explain your situation to them in detail and thoroughly look over their requriements. For example Barry University will accept your foreign degree, but they have a stipulation that you need to have atteneded college in the USA for at least 1 year prior to submitting your application. 

As far as your GPA question, I can only imagine that CASPA will follow the GPA that was given on your evaluation. Also I would encourage you to get a second evaluation done (this time use WES). I know it is costly to do the evaluation, but my wife is from Brazil and when we evaluated her transcripts we used 2 different places and both places gave different course credit hours as well as different GPA's. At any rate WES is known as the mecca of transcript evaluation services, so use them. 

Best of luck.

[Nina758]

The evaluated GPA will be the same as it was by the evaluation service and listed under its  own separate section called official WES GPA.  Then only the US prerequisite grades will be used to calculate the list of calculated CASPA GPAS such as BCP, cumulative etc, so it is basically like having two different GPA sections which are not combined.  Also the individual foreign grades will not be listed on caspa.

Edited June 21, 2020 by Nina758

[jafll04]

12 hours ago, johncfl said:

Hi I am not in the same position as you but figured I would do my best to point you in the right direction. First look at this link and read through it: https://help.liaisonedu.com/CASPA_Applicant_Help_Center/Sending_Your_Official_Transcripts_and_Test_Scores_to_CASPA/Sending_Official_Transcripts_to_CASPA/Foreign_and_French-Canadian_Transcripts

Second, if you have not yet determined what schools you plan to apply for, being that you are a foreign graduate I would do this as soon as possible. Many programs will not allow you to apply with a foreign degree at all. But there are some that will and I would find out which ones you are interested and call them and explain your situation to them in detail and thoroughly look over their requriements. For example Barry University will accept your foreign degree, but they have a stipulation that you need to have atteneded college in the USA for at least 1 year prior to submitting your application. 

As far as your GPA question, I can only imagine that CASPA will follow the GPA that was given on your evaluation. Also I would encourage you to get a second evaluation done (this time use WES). I know it is costly to do the evaluation, but my wife is from Brazil and when we evaluated her transcripts we used 2 different places and both places gave different course credit hours as well as different GPA's. At any rate WES is known as the mecca of transcript evaluation services, so use them. 

Best of luck.

Thank you for your reply. I do have a list of the schools I am interested in that accept foreign degrees and as far as having attended a US institution, I will be completing all the prerequisites here in California. May I know which evaluator you used aside from WES and how big the GPA difference was? I had my transcript evaluated by ECE but when doing my research, some schools only accept WES so I would have to have it evaluated again.

[jafll04]

26 minutes ago, Nina758 said:

The evaluated GPA will be the same as it was by the evaluation service and listed under its  own separate section called official WES GPA.  Then only the US prerequisite grades will be used to calculate the list of calculated CASPA GPAS such as BCP, cumulative etc, so it is basically like having two different GPA sections which are not combined.  Also the individual foreign grades will not be listed on caspa.

This is great to hear! This perfectly answered my question. Thank you for your help!

[Hgill43]

On 6/18/2020 at 8:02 PM, jafll04 said:

Hello. As the title suggests, I recently migrated to the US and hold a foreign Bachelor's degree in Psychology but I am in the process of completing my prerequisites here in California. I had ECE evaluate my transcript and my cGPA is 3.4. My question is, is there anyone here in the same situation as me? Will my evaluated GPA be the same when I input it in CASPA? I hear a lot of stories where their GPA was much lower compared to what they have in their transcript. I have used the GPA calculator provided by CASPA but I don't know if it applies to foreign credits.

Hi, I am foreign educated as well and I had my bachelor degree coursework evaluated by WES long time ago. I graduated with Master program from UIC in 2015. I am physical therapist at present. In Caspa transcript section (under FAQ), you can find what courses are considered as science courses and then may be you can calculate your sGPA/cGPA. Worse part of ECE/WES evaluation is that your transcript won't be added as course by course so unfortunately you won't be able to select course which complete prerequisite in program material section. I am familiar with only couple of colleges that accept foreign coursework like university of tempa, stanford etc.