Numerical grading system?

[Guest criminologist]

Hello I will be going to Michigan State for graduate school soon and I learned that they use a numerical grading system only with no letters. I am just wondering if anyone knows how this compares to the typical letter grading scale. Does this type of scale make it more difficult to get higher grades since it could be up to a teacher to decide their own scale? In my previous college we could get up to A+s which equal 4.3 points, and it did not matter what class you took, for instance if you got a 82 it would always be a B- which would translate to 2.67 grade points, or if you got a 93-97 it would always be an A...the system was in increments of .3, but here it only goes up to 4.0, and it goes by increments of .5 which kind of concerns me. Like is a 3.5 an A or B? and there are no +/-. It is less flexible it seems. Thanks for any replies.

Edited April 7, 2012 by gz390

[Pauli]

No one cares about grades in grad school.

EDIT #1: Ah, I see that you're not in engineering or science, where grades don't matter. Most universities in America actually do increments of 1.0 for courses (i.e., A = 4.0, B = 3.0, etc.), so that may sound even more inflexible to you, but those details are irrelevant in the long run.

EDIT #2: Are you an international student? American employers don't view grades at American schools as intensely as those from overseas schools, because they don't judge people from a single number but instead from their overall portfolio.

Edited April 8, 2012 by Pauli

[Guest criminologist]

No one cares about grades in grad school.

EDIT #1: Ah, I see that you're not in engineering or science, where grades don't matter. Most universities in America actually do increments of 1.0 for courses (i.e., A = 4.0, B = 3.0, etc.), so that may sound even more inflexible to you, but those details are irrelevant in the long run.

EDIT #2: Are you an international student? American employers don't view grades at American schools as intensely as those from overseas schools, because they don't judge people from a single number but instead from their overall portfolio.

Yeah I know grades don't matter that much in grad school but to graduate you need at least a 3.0 overall so I thought it was kind of infelxible with only increments of .5 with no letter grades. This would leave it up to the teacher to decide what grade you need to get a 4.0, 3.5, 3.0 etc...kind of outdated to me.I thought it would use a letter system, with the +/- so gpa could go in .333 increments.

I am not a international student.

[Pauli]

Professors almost always give A's and B's in grad courses. If you check out the grading distributions for grad courses, they're almost always all A's or B's. It's mostly because grad students already do well in classes, and also because professors simply give those kind of grading distributions. You have nothing to worry about with your GPA. It's the qualifying and preliminary exams that grad students worry about.

[Guest criminologist]

Oh ok. Thanks

I shouldn't worry then since the only things I have to do is coursework.

Edited April 14, 2012 by gz390