A Citadel application form asked for GPA and neither degree's
Abschlussnote existed anywhere in claims.json - only the M.Eng. thesis
grade. The single lead was an old CV extraction whose own provenance
note disclaims it and which already carries a known error, so it was not
safe to convert from. User confirmed both directly: M.Eng. 1.6 and
B.Eng. 2.4 on the German 1.0-4.0 scale.
US 4.0 equivalents recorded via the modified Bavarian formula, which
simplifies to 5.0 - G: 3.4 and 2.6. Both fields carry usage rules,
because a converted grade is easy to misuse. They are for application
forms and credential checks only, never to be presented as a natively
awarded GPA, and the German scale must always be stated alongside -
particularly for the bachelor, where the conversion makes a solid "gut"
read weaker to a US audience than it is.
Also flagged a percentile that does not agree with itself. The relative
grade is ECTS B, but this record said top 35%, the user said top 30%,
and ECTS B is formally the next 25% after the top 10%. Rather than pick
one, the field now says to check the certificate and notes that quoting
"ECTS grade B" alone is always safe. A specific percentile on an
application is exactly the kind of small number that a credential check
can contradict.
New grade_output_rule: neither grade belongs on a resume or in a cover
letter by default. Industry resumes omit grades, and the thesis 1.0 is
the only figure worth surfacing where academic performance is valued.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01MHtzyTKBcg6BWhD5qFegtK
dennisthiessenandClaude Opus 5
124f5d4953