Score to grade

How to use it

You need two groups of figures. For the test, the maximum score and the pass threshold as a percentage of the points (sixty per cent is the most common choice). For the scale, the grade you give to a blank paper, the pass grade, the top grade and the rounding you use in your gradebook. The score obtained is optional: leave it empty and you get only the point by point table to hand out with the test, with a button to copy it into your exam document.

Why the curve bends instead of being a proportion

If the pass mark sits at 60% of the points, then 60% of the points has to be worth the pass grade, not 60% of the grade range. A plain proportion on a scale from 2 to 10 would give 6.8 at 60% of the points, almost a whole grade for free. So the tool uses two straight segments: below the threshold the grade climbs from the bottom grade to the pass grade, above it climbs from the pass grade to the top grade, with different slopes. The formulas are v = vMin + (vPass minus vMin) times p divided by pThreshold below the threshold, and v = vPass + (vMax minus vPass) times (p minus pThreshold) divided by (pMax minus pThreshold) above it. In the one case where the pass mark falls at the same share of points and of grades the line stops bending, and the page says so.

Rounding moves the pass mark

Rounding to half a grade quietly moves the threshold, because 5.75 becomes 6. With a pass at 12 points out of 20 and rounding to 0.5, eleven and a half points are already enough: that is the real threshold, not the one written in the grid. The tool finds the turning point by inverting the curve at the pass grade minus half a step (round to nearest, exact halves going up) and shows the nominal threshold next to the effective one. If you do not like the gap, raise the threshold or round more finely.

Questions with different weights

In the questions box write one line per exercise, fields separated by a semicolon: label, maximum points, points scored. Plain numbers work too. The tool adds up the maximums and puts them into the test score, adds up what was scored and above all tells you the weight of every question as a percentage. That is the check that exposes an unbalanced paper, the one where the long exercise that took half an hour is worth 10% of the grade while the closed questions are worth 40%.

Declared limits

The grid belongs to you and your department, it is not a national rule: threshold, bottom grade and rounding come from the assessment criteria of your own school, which this page cannot know. The tool turns a score into a grade, it does not judge whether the score is fair, and it does not handle anything other than points, such as level based rubrics, minimum objectives, the weight of oral tests or papers with a penalty for wrong answers (subtract the penalties first and type the net score here). Your gradebook software may round in its own way, so compare the result with what you finally save. The whole calculation stays in your browser.