The same marks, a 3.000 in Toronto and a 3.150 at McGill
Canadian universities grade in percentages and report in grade points, and there is no national table for getting from one to the other. Each university publishes its own bands. Most of the large ones top out at 4.0, which makes the results look comparable, and they are not: the same percentage mark can be a different letter, worth a different number of points, depending on whose table reads it. This guide takes one short transcript and runs it on two published tables, then shows where the two part company mark by mark.
The two tables
The University of Toronto registrar publishes an undergraduate scale of thirteen bands: A+ at 90–100 and A at 85–89 are both worth 4.0, then A- 3.7 at 80–84, B+ 3.3 at 77–79, B 3.0 at 73–76, B- 2.7 at 70–72, C+ 2.3 at 67–69, C 2.0 at 63–66, C- 1.7 at 60–62, D+ 1.3 at 57–59, D 1.0 at 53–56, D- 0.7 at 50–52, and F at 0–49. Its Arts and Science calendar prints the same table and adds the arithmetic: grade point averages are weighted sums of the grade points earned.
McGill's course catalogue publishes nine bands: A 4.0 at 85–100, A- 3.7 at 80–84, B+ 3.3 at 75–79, B 3.0 at 70–74, B- 2.7 at 65–69, C+ 2.3 at 60–64, C 2.0 at 55–59, D 1.0 at 50–54, and F at 0–49. There is no A+, no C-, and no D+ or D-. Its formula is the same one: multiply each course's credits by its grade points, add, and divide by the total GPA credits.
The transcript
Four courses at three credits each, with final marks of 87, 78, 72 and 64. Nothing exotic: an A, a high B, a low B and a middling C, in the vocabulary of any Canadian campus.
On Toronto's table the letters are A (4.0), B+ (3.3), B- (2.7) and C (2.0). The grade points sum to 12.0; at three credits apiece that is 36.0 weighted points over 12 credits, a GPA of 3.000.
On McGill's table the same marks are A (4.0), B+ (3.3), B (3.0) and C+ (2.3). Two of the four marks moved up a band, the grade points sum to 12.6, the weighted total is 37.8 over the same 12 credits, and the GPA is 3.150. The gap is 0.150 of a grade point, from four ordinary marks and no difference in the work.
Where the tables part company
Line the two up on every whole-number passing mark from 50 to 100 and the pattern is clean. From 77 upward they agree on every mark, because both put B+ at 77, A- at 80 and 4.0 at 85. They also agree at 73–74 (a B on both) and at 53–54 (a D on both). Everywhere else — 23 of the 51 marks — McGill's table awards more points, and it is never the other way round.
| Mark | Toronto | McGill | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| 75–76 | B (3.0) | B+ (3.3) | 0.3 |
| 70–72 | B- (2.7) | B (3.0) | 0.3 |
| 67–69 | C+ (2.3) | B- (2.7) | 0.4 |
| 65–66 | C (2.0) | B- (2.7) | 0.7 |
| 63–64 | C (2.0) | C+ (2.3) | 0.3 |
| 60–62 | C- (1.7) | C+ (2.3) | 0.6 |
| 57–59 | D+ (1.3) | C (2.0) | 0.7 |
| 55–56 | D (1.0) | C (2.0) | 1.0 |
| 50–52 | D- (0.7) | D (1.0) | 0.3 |
The widest gap is at 55 and 56: a D worth 1.0 in Toronto, a C worth 2.0 at McGill, a full grade point on one mark. The two tables are not one scale with different labels. They are different scales that happen to share a ceiling.
A Toronto transcript in half-courses
Toronto weights courses in full-course equivalents, so a half-year course is 0.5 and a full-year course is 1.0. Take five half-courses at 88, 79, 74, 91 and 62, and one full-year course at 68. On Toronto's table the weighted points are 2.0, 1.65, 1.5, 2.0, 0.85 and 2.3, a total of 10.3 over 3.5 credits: a GPA of 2.943. On McGill's table the 68 becomes a B- (2.7) instead of a C+ (2.3) and the 62 becomes a C+ (2.3) instead of a C- (1.7); the total is 11.0 over the same 3.5, a GPA of 3.143. The full-year 68 supplies 0.4 of the 0.7-point difference in the totals by itself, because its weight is doubled, and the gap in the average is 0.200.
McGill truncates, and says so
McGill's catalogue adds a rule the Toronto pages do not state: the GPA is truncated to two decimals, not rounded, and its own example is that 3.596 displays on the transcript as 3.59, not 3.60. A transcript that lands there is easy to build. Six three-credit courses at 85 or better (say 86, 88, 90, 92, 85 and 87) are six A grades worth 72.0 weighted points; a 77 at three credits is a B+ worth 9.9; a 57 in a four-credit course is a C worth 8.0. That is 89.9 over 25 credits, exactly 3.596, shown as 3.59. Rounding would have said 3.60, and a student one hundredth short of a cutoff would feel the difference.
Read the same eight marks on Toronto's table and the six A grades still carry 72.0 and the 77 is still a B+ at 9.9, but the 57 is a D+ worth 1.3, so the four-credit course carries 5.2 rather than 8.0. The total is 87.1 over 25 credits, a GPA of 3.484. One course, one band, 0.112 of a grade point.
Checked against an independent calculator
The Canada page at gpacalculator.net publishes a university table that matches Toronto's on every mark from 60 up, and works the equally weighted marks 87, 78, 72 and 64 to a GPA of 3.0 — the same 3.000 this guide reaches on Toronto's table, which is the cross-check the calculator's test suite re-derives. Its high-school example, 82, 75 and 91 converted to 3.7, 3.0 and 4.0 and averaged to 3.57, reproduces too (10.7 over 3 is 3.567). One divergence is worth recording, as of September 11, 2026: that page folds Toronto's D+, D and D- into a single D worth 1.0 for 50–59, while the registrar publishes 1.3, 1.0 and 0.7 for those bands. The calculator here follows the registrar.