This note about grading and interpreting grades just adds some informative detail to what the course syllabus already says about grading, and it shows how grades are calculated for any particular assessment.
4-point scale
Grades in this course are assigned and calculated using Hofstra’s 4-point scale (described here in the Hofstra Bulletin). Following the Bulletin, the alphabetical grades, including plus (+) and minus (–), have the following 4-point scale values (and vice versa):
| letter | 4pt | Student’s academic performance … |
|---|---|---|
| A | 4.0 | “was of honors level.” |
| A– | 3.7 | |
| B+ | 3.3 | |
| B | 3.0 | “was distinctly above that required by the course.” |
| B– | 2.7 | |
| C+ | 2.3 | |
| C | 2.0 | “achieved the objectives of the course.” |
| C– | 1.7 | |
| D+ | 1.3 | |
| D | 1.0 | “was less than required for major or minor credit but … sufficient for … full degree credit.” |
| F | 0 | “failed to satisfy the objectives of the course.” |
Test and quiz grades
Quizzes and tests have a total number of raw points that is always a multiple of 4. When returning grades, I will tell you what to divide by to get your grade on a 4-point scale. Normally that is the number of main questions, but sometimes if differs, so just look for that.
Here is an example of calculating grades: If there were 6 questions on a test, worth 4 points each, I would tell you to divide your raw score by 6 to get a 4-point score. If a student got a raw overall score of 15/24, the would divide 15 total points by 6 to get their 4-point grade, which is 2.5 (= 15/6). Then they could look at Hofstra’s grade point scale (above) to see that 2.5 is equivalent to a C+, which is slightly higher than “achieved the objectives of the course.”
Accordingly, on this system, your overall grade on a test or quiz is just the average of the scores you earned on each question, or equivalently, the average points per question.
Overall course grades
Overall course grades will be calculated using the following percentages specified in the syllabus:
| Component | Fraction of total |
|---|---|
| Engagement: | 10% |
| Homework: | 20% |
| Quizzes: | 20% |
| First/midterm test: | 25% |
| Second/final test: | 25% |
Final grades will be calculated on a 4-point scale and then converted to letter-scale for posting to Hofstra’s final grade system online.