I still think the ABCDF system sounds so… childish? But presented like that I can see how it makes sense.
I always thought about more absolute systems as more, eh, honest? More of an absolute value of our worth, but in truth it depends completely on our teachers, so it’s not really any “truer” than the letter system. Just a different bias.
I’m glad there are so many interesting answers in this thread :)
Grades in the US are on a 4 point scale, with decimal values between:
3.5-4.0 - A
3.0-3.5 - B
2.5-3.0 - C
2.0-2.5 - D
1.0-2.0 - F
A “good” grade in a class is 3.5 or better, and 2.0 is usually barely passing. Letter grades are used through high school, and high school and college use the 4 point scale on transcripts, and people translate to the letter grades for talking with friends.
In assignments, you get a percent rating, with 60% being barely passing. There’s a lot of granularity there.
Grading on a curve means the professor expects a certain distribution of scores, so of everyone scores poorly, the test is bad, so the scores are readjusted according to that expected curve. If people outperform, then there’s no curve and you get the score you get.
I still think the ABCDF system sounds so… childish? But presented like that I can see how it makes sense. I always thought about more absolute systems as more, eh, honest? More of an absolute value of our worth, but in truth it depends completely on our teachers, so it’s not really any “truer” than the letter system. Just a different bias.
I’m glad there are so many interesting answers in this thread :)
Grades in the US are on a 4 point scale, with decimal values between:
A “good” grade in a class is 3.5 or better, and 2.0 is usually barely passing. Letter grades are used through high school, and high school and college use the 4 point scale on transcripts, and people translate to the letter grades for talking with friends.
In assignments, you get a percent rating, with 60% being barely passing. There’s a lot of granularity there.
Grading on a curve means the professor expects a certain distribution of scores, so of everyone scores poorly, the test is bad, so the scores are readjusted according to that expected curve. If people outperform, then there’s no curve and you get the score you get.