Grading issues (transforming from letters to percentage and vice versa).

[MathematicalPhysicist]

Can someone please help me converting grades from percentage to the letters system?

In the states if I'm not mistaken:
95-100:A+
90-94:A
85-89:B+
80-84:B
75-79:C+
70-74:C
65-69:D+
60-64:D
below that you get F.

Is this correct?

Anyone knows how it goes with colleges and univs at Great Britain?

thanks in advance.

 

[tmc]

It's a bit more complicated over there. short intro:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grades_in_the_United_Kingdom
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPA

Also the +'s will differ a lot across the US. In general, it's better to think of it as
90s: A
80s: B
70s: C
60s: D
Lower: F

In Canada and a few other places, the passing grade is 50 and the average is set to be in the low 60s:
80s and up: A
70s: B
60s: C
50s: D
below: F

 

[Moonbear]

Can someone please help me converting grades from percentage to the letters system?

In the states if I'm not mistaken:
95-100:A+
90-94:A
85-89:B+
80-84:B
75-79:C+
70-74:C
65-69:D+
60-64:D
below that you get F.

Is this correct?

It's a rough rule of thumb, but instructors don't have to follow that scheme. Some schools allow for minus grades (i.e., A-). Some stretch the B and C range so that failing is below 50%. Some condense the range so failing is below a 70%. And in things like professional programs, students need to get a 70% or above in their courses to advance in the program, so even though we still break down lower grades into Ds and Fs, it's pretty irrelevant since neither allows them to pass to the next level.

 

[Archduke]

Woah! I'm so glad I'm in the U.K.; a fail is below 40%, and for a first class (read A) grade, you need to get only 70% or above.

 

[Monocles]

In the US (probably elsewhere too, I don't know) many classes are graded on a curve. This just means that the worse case scenario is a 90 = A. If its curved then the grade that people get is based off of the average grade in the class... At my school, the average in a class is usually somewhere between 60 and 75, so an A will usually be around 80-85.

 

[Moonbear]

To be honest, the numbers don't mean much anyway. Every instructor has a sense of what material they expect students to know to pass their class and what level they need to understand to excel in their class, so give assignments and write exam questions at an appropriate difficulty level to fit their grading schema, or else they don't put much effort into the questions at all and just scale up the grades when students miss most of them so some reasonable percentage of the class passes.

I've taken classes where a 30% was a B and 15% was still passing. (Talk about exam stress!) Though, that was also one of the worst examples I've ever seen of a poorly written test. The questions seemed pulled out of thin air...topics not covered in either the lecture or the textbook (the lecture and textbook never matched either...it was as if the professor picked a random book and assigned chapters but never bothered to see what they included).

 

[cristo]

Anyone knows how it goes with colleges and univs at Great Britain?

Firstly, note that university and college are strictly different things in the UK: I presume you mean university. If so, there is no such thing as lettered grades in (most) universities in the UK: everything is done by % with, as mentioned above, a 70% average mark being the requirement for the highest class of degree (first class).

It's a bit more complicated over there. short intro:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grades_in_the_United_Kingdom

Note that link is talking about high school and college, and not university grading.

 

[MathematicalPhysicist]

cristo, for example in cambridge's part 3 I've read that they have another marking system, of alpha's,beta's etc with distinction or merit.

 

[cristo]

cristo, for example in cambridge's part 3 I've read that they have another marking system, of alpha's,beta's etc with distinction or merit.

Yeah, note that I said 'most' above! I've also heard that Cambridge mark Part III modules from alpha+ to gamma-. I don't really know anything about that, though, so it's probably best someone else answer. In general, however, lettered grades don't exist in English universities.

 

[xmavidis]

Is there a rule on how to convert percentage to 1-4 grading system?