American graduate looking for information on looking at UK schools

What course are you interested in applying for and what sort of universities are you considering?

Hi All,

I am new to the student room and made an account just to ask this question. I recently graduated from an American university with a high GPA (3.89 out of 4.00) and am wondering how to convert that to UK standards. I see that a 3.7 is considered "Upper-second class honours" and a 4.0 is first class honors on the US-UK Fulbright commission page.

I also wanted to know how UK schools view work experience. I have had 5 part-time jobs (all work related), 7 internships, and 4 research gigs, and will be conducting research with the Fulbright from 2019 to 2020. I know that some schools require you to have work experience when you apply, but I wanted to know how strictly they define work experience.

Sorry for the strange questions, but there are no professors from my university that have applied or attended school in the UK, so I am new to the process and wanted to see.

Thanks!

You'll be fine. Actually very few UK unis require any work experience, the norm is to plough straight through from school to undergrad to postgrad, although that is changing. However, what you've described there would be pretty ideal for your course, which is one that values real-world experience. You'd be able to apply anywhere in the UK with that profile and reasonably hope for offers.

You could look at the webpages of unis that take a lot of overseas student, Cambridge, UCL etc and see what they say about equivalencies, but I don't think 3.89 is going to be a problem anywhere.

A 3.8 is often considered equivalent to a 1st class honours (the highest class of honours you can get in a UK degree), so from an academic standpoint you should be suitably qualified. That, combined with your extensive experience in the area (which, as above, isn't required but should give you plenty to discuss with regards to your research and academic interests I imagine) should put you in good stead I would imagine.

Of course there are no guarantees, but there seems little to suggest you wouldn't be a reasonable applicant for that course so, unless the cost of application (if there is one?) would cause financial duress I can't see much reason not to apply