<p>If i’m from a country which has a standardised national examination like the O levels how much would high school grades matter? I have pretty good results from the national exam but my high school grades aren’t that impressive. in my country, the national exam results is all that matters. How would the top US schools view it?</p>
<p>High school grade are very important because they show how hard you work. </p>
<p>Standardized tests are important in that they might show what you know and how intelligent you are.</p>
<p>hey bluesapphire, where are you from?I am facing the same problem too!</p>
<p>top us schools [if i get what you mean] will pay considerable attention to external/national exam results as well as standardized test scores - SAT.</p>
<p>grading systems differ in several countries, and since external exam results matter more than internal grades, they’ll more likely look at those. but then, a certain level of consistency must be there, e.g. good grades, good exam results; not-so-good grades, good exam results; good grades, bad exam results [don’t look too good], tho’ the anomalies can always be explained.</p>
<p>unfortunately here they like to focus on grades a lot also - especially in the US</p>
<p>The marking is pretty tough in my high school, and exam standards are higher than the national avarage… they like to have tough exam questions to ‘motivate’ students to work hard…</p>
<p>hatake_kakashi, i’m from Malaysia. Are you from Japan?</p>
<p>Perak!!!having the same problem too!!!</p>
<p>god…suddenly malaysians are sprouting up everywhere…</p>
<p><em>dances around bon fire</em></p>
<p>Yep!</p>
<p>You might consider having your guidance counselor or recommendation writers address this issue in their accompanying letters. US colleges will probably weight your class grades very heavily unless your recommenders explain the situation.</p>
<p>for my high school (O Level) there weren’t any explanation because all I got were As and a couple of Bs. IN my A-level college my GC explains for everyone applying, that “marking scheme are strict and thus may not reflect a candidate’s true potiential in an external examination”.</p>
<p>haha… nice meeting you guys here!</p>
<p>Are you all doing A levels? Anyone applying with only SPM results? Btw, where are you guys applying?</p>
<p>yeah, I’m doind A-level too!!! My GC explained in the letter that internal examinations are stringently marked and teachers marked them strictly…</p>
<p>So how should i explain if my school likes to give super hard questions occasionally? In other words, you could score 80+ on one test and 50+ on the next… how should i have my counselor explain this?</p>
<p>make sure everyone else in your class gets the same one, and BEG your counselor to mention that. in form 4 and 5, NOBODY ever gets an A1 in biology, and only one or two will get an A2. that’s the highest i ever got for biology.</p>
<p>Does your high school report grades or scores?</p>
<p>both numerical marks and the grades. 
even PE class goes into the report! :eek: and i got an C for one of the silly tests. you know, the one where there’re 40 questions and everyone discusses the answers with each other in hushed voices.</p>
<p>Whew… good thing mine doesn’t include PE… but they include classes like art though( which i’m terrible in…)</p>
<p>Anyway, for your high school results, are you sending scores from form 1 or from form 3?</p>
<p>i sent from form 3 cos that’s what they asked for (grade 9). if i send from form 1 i have another 40 As to show them. :(</p>
<p>I’m applying only with spm results, in this case should i send scores from form 1? Also, my scores in form 1 were ok, but my form 2 scores were pretty bad, and in form 3 there was a huge improvement, and it has stayed pretty much the same till form 5. In this case should i just send scores from form 3 and save the explanation or send from form 1 or 2 to show improvements?</p>