How do I calculate GPA if I've studied in other countries?

Since I graduated from my university in the US, I’ve studied for a year in France, and a year in Taiwan. Neither of the latter gave me a GPA. Is it fair, though, when searching for scholarships for grad school, to calculate them into my GPA when I search for scholarships (since nearly scholarship has a certain GPA requirement)?

You will have to use a transcript evaluation service. We’ve used ECE, with the credits and GPA being accepted by the Dept of Defense with no problems.

Another common service is WES - the World Education Service

The conversion of foreign academic credentials according to U.S. educational standards is typically performed by one of two sources.

A) When you apply to a college or university for further education, some schools will have their own personnel trained in evaluating foreign credentials.

B) Schools that do NOT have their own evaluation systems in place will require that foreign-educated applicants procure the services of a credential evaluation service. Such agencies operate as providers of expert opinions, and each school (or scholarship board) has the privilege of selecting whose opinions they are willing to accept. Therefore it is to the applicant’s best advantage to contact both in advance and inquire as to whether he or she should have an evaluation performed by a specific agency.

Since you don’t have a degree from the foreign universities (right?) you might want to consider a) whether the foreign GPA is likely to bring your GPA up and b) whether the scholarships actually require you to include this in your GPA.

I had an “interesting” experience with this when I returned from a year as a high school exchange student. I had studied for a year in Spain. There, rather than the students moving from classroom to classroom for each subject as is normal in US high schools, students stayed in the classroom and teachers came in to teach each subject. The classes were either Sciences or Letters. My school had 4 sections of my grade–A, B, C and D. I was in B, the morning Sciences section.

When I returned to the US I met with the principal and the Spanish teacher, who had a bit of a reputation as crazy. She looked at my report card (which was a mix of Satisfactory, Good, and Excellent) and saw that I was in Section B. She insisted that the B represented my overall GPA for the year, and they factored it into my overall H.S. GPA as such, a B = 3.0 for all classes. It all worked out fine for me re: college, scholarships, etc. so I didn’t press the issue, but I probably should have insisted on more accuracy.