PhD admission: What is an average grade of B?

To be admitted to a PhD program at NTNU, candidates must normally have an average grade of B. But what is an average grade of B? In all the PhD advertisements from NTNU that I have seen recently, this requirement is accompanied by a link to NTNU’s grading scale, but there one finds only a qualitative description of the grades A-F. There is nothing about how these grades compare to grades from elsewhere or even how one calculates the average of letters. As far as I can tell, this information is not available anywhere else on NTNU’s websites. 

Even for students with Norwegian education this can be confusing. Their transcript in Vitnemålsportalen does not state an average grade. The practice, though, seems to be that an average of B means an average of 3.5 out of 5 when the letters are translated to integers where A=5 and F=0, but NTNU has no mention anywhere of this. For those with Norwegian education, this does clarify what the requirement is, assuming they know of this translation.  

Potential applicants from abroad will likely be even more confused because they will not even be familiar with the Norwegian grading scale. Those from Europe might be helped because the common European ECTS grading scale is also a scale from A to F. Thus, while their local grades might not follow this template, their university should have a translation from local grades to the ECTS grades. Whether this is easily available is another matter; if NTNU has one I cannot find it.  

Angsten for å gjere feil er så stor at ein går glipp av det rette

For Norwegian grades, though, one might think that the translation is trivial: A=A, B=B, and so on. This might be the intention, but it is not reality. According to the ECTS grading scale, the best 10% get A, the next 25% get B, and the next 30% get C. Thus, a minimum average grade of B might translate to being in the top 35%, or the top 50% if this grade requirement just means having 3.5 (BC) out of 5 (A). At NTNU in 2025, 22% of grades at master’s level were A, 36% were B, and 25% were C. A crude estimate would therefore indicate that 58% of NTNU graduates have an average grade of 4 or more, and that maybe as many as 70% have an average of 3.5 or more (these figures are very similar to those of other Norwegian universities). When NTNU asks that applicants’ grades must be “equal to B or better compared to NTNU's grading scale,” does this mean being in the top 35% (50%), as one would expect based on the ECTS scale, or does it mean being in the top 58% (70%), as reflected in the actual grade distribution at NTNU?  

Whatever the answer, applicants whose university translates their local grades to the ECTS scale according to its percentage guidelines are subject to a much stricter grade requirement than those applying with a degree from NTNU. NTNU, however, is not alone in inflating grades. All European universities are asked to provide a diploma supplement that should include the translation of local grades to the ECTS scale. Here are two examples: A diploma supplement from an Italian university translated the highest cumulative grade of 110 cum laude as A and 110 as B. Later it stated that 83% of graduates got 110 cum laude, i.e., A, and 12% got 110 (this is typical, as far as I can tell, for Italian universities). In a program in Amsterdam, 77% got A and 13% got B according to its translation to ECTS grades. The lesson, in other words, is that the “same” grade requirement is very uneven already for candidates with European education. 

This still leaves candidates with master’s degrees from outside the EU. They will often have neither a translation to ECTS grades nor available grade-distribution data. How do they, and how do we, determine whether they meet the B requirement? My worry is that we end up being restrictive toward non-EU applicants while uncritically accepting the translations to A–F grades stipulated in the diploma supplements from European universities.  

Those applying for our PhD positions likely never got so deep into this matter. Rather, those who are confident about themselves and their eligibility just apply. Those who are less confident – perhaps because they intended to apply with a degree from outside of the EU with no official translation even to the ECTS scale – might have given up at this point. I think it is worth considering whether there were well-qualified candidates among those who decided not to apply, and especially whether underrepresented groups and applicants with educations from the Global South were overrepresented among those well-qualified candidates. 

Jobbusikkerheten tærer på unge forskere: – Skremmende tall

One might argue that this is ultimately a non-issue because NTNU does allow for exemptions from the B requirement. But, in a sense, it puts the issue on full display. Is this possibility of exemption a message to evaluation committees that they can simply disregard the B requirement, recommend the candidates they think are best suited, and, if any of those do not meet the B requirement, obtain an exemption for them? In practice, getting an exemption involves carefully arguing the case for each particular candidate, as well as coordination with and approval by several layers of administration. The signal, in other words, seems to be that the B requirement should normally apply, and that its importance is such that it should be resource-intensive to get an exemption from it. And the resource drain does not end there. Because it is unclear what the requirement is, every evaluation committee faces a dilemma: either they request, for every candidate they consider for the position, an assessment from the Education section, which is currently making the final call on whether candidates meet the B requirement, or they make their own judgements at the risk of learning later from the Education section that their preferred candidates did not meet the requirement after all. This is also resource-intensive. While it might save resources up front, it could result in even more resource use in cases where there are problems with preferred candidates meeting the B requirement, especially if this happens very late in the hiring process.  

The Education section itself must arguably also face all the dilemmas about comparing grading scales listed above. When no translation to grades A–F exists, to whom do they, and should they, grant the benefit of the doubt? When such a translation exists, for instance as stipulated in a diploma supplement, should they simply accept it? If the Education section makes its own (perhaps partly inscrutable) assessment, what should evaluation committees rely on to ensure that candidates meet the requirement apart from having every candidate assessed by the Education section? 

What, then, should we do about all of this? Simple: scrap the unclear and, in some cases, resource-intensive grade requirement and just hire the candidate that the evaluation panel, after careful consideration, has judged to be best qualified for the position.