Patrick Mooney, TA
Department of English, UC Santa Barbara
Eng 133SO, Prof. Waid
This document is an explanation of how your overall grade is calculated for the quarter. This is, after all, your education; and your grade, though perhaps incidental to the real purposes of education, is, after all, very important to you for a variety of (mostly good, I think) reasons. Because of this, I believe it's worthwhile to show my hand in this matter, so you can understand exactly how your final grade is calculated.
It is always perfectly OK to e-mail me and ask what your grade is. I use a spreadsheet to perform these calculations, and I keep it up to date, so it is almost no work for me to answer an e-mail asking what your grade is. It is your grade, based on your work, and I believe strongly that you should have the option of knowing what your current grade is at any time.
Recall the following details about the relative value of the course components from the section guidelines handout:
- Punctual, attentive reading. (Before each lecture, you should have thoughtfully and carefully read the assigned texts listed under that date on the syllabus.)
- Attendance at each and every lecture.
- Attendance and participation in your discussion section (10% of course grade).
- A first version of an essay, 4–6 pages in length, with preparatory work, due in my mail box at noon on Monday, 19 May (20% of course grade).
- A final paper of 7–9 pages, due in my mailbox at noon on Friday, 6 June (25% of course grade).
- Midterm exam on Tuesday, 6 May (15% of course grade total).
- A final exam from noon to 3 p.m. on Monday, 9 June (30% of course grade).
- All of the above course assignments must be completed, and at least six discussion sections must be attended, in order to receive a passing grade for the course.
This quarter, I am performing grade calculations in such a way that there will be 500 total points for the term. That is to say, more specifically, that the midterm will be worth 75 points, the final exam will be worth 150 points, the first writing assignment will be worth 100 points, the second writing assignment will be worth 125 points, and section attendance and participation will be worth 50 points. If an assignment or exam describes itself as having a different number of points, I will scale the points that you receive from that assignment to the number of points in the previous sentence in order to preserve the proportions given on the course syllabus.
I do not "curve" grades. In the past, the average (i.e., mean) grade I gave for all students during the quarter has always been very close to 85% (a middle B). This is not the result of curving grades, but rather of the way that I define what each grade is worth.
The University of California does not provide a formal definition of how percentages or point totals should map onto letter grades, preferring to leave that determination to individual instructors. However, there is a default mapping on GauchoSpace for instructors who use GauchoSpace to calculate grades and do not override this mapping. Although Professor Waid and I do not use GauchoSpace to calculate grades, I find that this set of numbers is in line with general academic practice, and have decided to adopt it (with the small modification that I have defined an A+ grade in a way consistent with the rest of the grade definitions — GauchoSpace does not include a definition for A+).
My mapping from percentages to letter grades is as follows:
| If your (percentage) grade for the quarter is at least… | but less than … | then your letter grade is… |
|---|---|---|
| 97% | — | A+ |
| 93% | 97% | A |
| 90% | 93% | A- |
| 87% | 90% | B+ |
| 83% | 87% | B |
| 80% | 83% | B- |
| 77% | 80% | C+ |
| 73% | 77% | C |
| 70% | 73% | C- |
| 67% | 70% | D+ |
| 63% | 67% | D |
| 60% | 63% | D- |
| — | 60% | F |
This set of mappings is the basis for both your paper grades (discussed in more detail below) and your final grade for the quarter (also discussed in more detail below).
The midterm will be worth 75 points. If the nominal total points on the exam itself do not total 75, then your score on the exam will be scaled proportionally so that they represent a score out of 75 possible points, in order to match the syllabus's description of the midterm as worth 15% of the total grade for the course.
Because there are extra credit points possible on the exam, some students may receive more than 100% (i.e., more than 75 points for the midterm).
Section attendance and participation are worth 50 total points (10% of the total grade for the quarter). Before describing the relevant details, it is worthwhile to say up front that you do not automatically receive points simply for attending section — there are no seat-filling points. Someone who attends every section but never speaks does not receive any attendance/participation points. (In practice, though, the student who never speaks is so rare as to border on nonexistence.) Make sure you understand the implications of the formula at the end of this section.
I track your absences from each section and total how many sections you missed. If you miss more than four sections, you automatically receive a non-passing grade for the course. Recall from the section guidelines handout that I do not distinguish between excused
and unexcused
absences — if you are not present and not contributing to the group's discussion, then you do not receive any points for the week, regardless of the reason why you missed section. For this reason, it's a good idea not to miss section unless you absolutely have to — or at least unless the reason why you're missing section is important enough to you that it's worth it to you to lose points for not being there.
In addition to tracking attendance, I also assign a relative, competitive weighting factor, a fraction between zero and one, to everyone's participation over the course of the quarter. A weighting factor of zero means that you made no meaningful contributions at all to the group's discourse during the term (very unlikely). A weighting factor of one means that you made constant insightful, meaningful contributions to the group's discussion that involved not only merely speaking, but regularly advancing the group's understanding of topics under discussion (quite uncommon, but during most quarters, several students will receive this weighting score). An average weighting for students in the course will likely be about 0.8.
It might be worth emphasizing that your relative weighting involves making more productive contributions to the class's discussion than other people, and that you are competing for this relative weighting not only against your own section, but against my other section for the quarter.
All of that being said, your attendance/participation score is calculated according to this formula:
(total number of sections attended) * (relative weighting) * 5
Early reporting caveat: I do not assign the weighting factor until the end of the quarter, so if you have not been speaking regularly so far, it's not too late to leave me with a good impression. Because I do not assign the weighting factor until the end of the quarter, any your grade at this point
estimate that I send you during the quarter substitutes an estimate based entirely on attendance for your attendance/participation score.
Letter grades for papers are assigned based on my grading rubric for analytical papers, possibly modified by up to three penalties. The first of these penalties is for late papers. The second is for not meeting the bare minimum length requirement for papers (four full pages for the first paper, seven full pages for the second paper, not including the Works Cited page). The last possible penalty is for not revising your first paper substantially as you expand it into your second paper.
Late papers are penalized by one-third of a letter grade for each day that the paper is late, counting the entire weekend as a single day.
The penalty for not hitting the bare minimum length for a paper — even if you're only short by one line — is four-thirds of a letter grade. You can also incur this same penalty by writing a paper that appears to meet or slightly exceed the bare minimum paper length, but reaches this length by tweaking the format for the paper in such a way that it looks to me as if you would not have reached the minimum length if the paper had been properly formatted (for instance, if you just exactly fill four pages for your first paper, but your margins are too wide, then you have, effectively, not met the minimum length requirement, and will incur the penalty). If you get this penalty on paper one, you can remove it by writing at least eight full pages on paper two. If you get this penalty on paper two, there is no way to remove it, so make absolutely sure that paper two is long enough.
Professor Waid's expectation is that your second paper will be a substantial revision of your first paper (and not merely, for instance, an expansion of it). If your second paper does not constitute a substantial revision of your first paper, then you will receive a penalty of up to a full letter grade.
You will notice, regarding the late-penalty calculation, that I say that the penalty for a late paper is one-third of a letter grade
per day, not that it bumps you down to the next lower grade range. One letter grade being worth 10%, what this actually means is that each day that your paper is late reduces your score by 3⅓%. Because the middle range (neither plus nor minus) is slightly larger than the top and bottom ranges (plus and minus) for each letter range, this means that, in practice, a B that you get by turning in a B+ paper one day late is worth slightly more than a B paper turned in on time, whereas a B- that you get by turning in a B paper one day late is slightly lower than a B- paper turned in on time. In practice, I have never yet had a student whose final grade for the quarter was affected by this calculation detail (but this document, after all, attempts to be an exhaustive declaration of how your grade is calculated). You will also have noticed that I assign letter grades to papers, and then map those letter grades onto point totals. To put it another way: every A- paper without penalties is worth the same number of points as every other A- paper without penalties, every B paper without penalties is worth the same number of points as every other B paper without penalties, and so forth.
With two exceptions (the very rare A+ and F grades, discussed in a moment), points assigned for each paper grade are the number of points in the middle of that grade range — not the high end, and not the low end. That is, an A- paper gets not 90% (the low end of the A- scale), nor 93% (the high end of the A- scale), but the middle — 91.5%.
In the unusual event that someone writes an A+ paper, this is worth 100%, not 98.5% (which would be the middle of the A+ range). You will note from my grading rubric that I set the bar for A+ papers very high, and I believe that anyone writing one of these papers should be rewarded with the maximum possible number of points for that assignment.
If your paper has problems large enough to land it in the D range, I do not assign a plus or minus to it — all D grades are simply D's (before penalties, anyway). If you do something that warrants an F on a paper, you get zero points for that assignment (and, if the F is caused by plagiarism, may have done something that will result in further disciplinary action).
After your letter grade is mapped onto a percentage, this percentage is then used to calculate a point total, based on the total possible points for the assignment: 100 points (20% of your quarter grade) for the first paper, and 125 points (25% of your quarter grade) for the second paper.
Given all of this, here is the point value of each letter grade, assuming there are no penalties:
| Letter Grade | Percentage | Point total on 1st paper | Point total on 2nd paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| A+ | 100% | 100 | 125 |
| A | 95% | 95 | 118.75 |
| A- | 91.5% | 91.5 | 114.375 |
| B+ | 88.5% | 88.5 | 110.625 |
| B | 85% | 85 | 106.25 |
| B- | 81.5% | 81.5 | 101.875 |
| C+ | 78.5% | 78.5 | 98.125 |
| C | 75% | 75 | 93.75 |
| C- | 71.5% | 71.5 | 89.375 |
| D | 65% | 65 | 81.25 |
| F | 0 | 0 | 0 |
The formula used to calculate total points for papers which do incur penalties is:
[(percentage score for base grade) - (days late * 10⁄3) - (length penalty of 40⁄3, if applicable) - (non-revision penalty, if applicable)] * (maximum points possible⁄100),
in which percentage score for base grade
is the value from the column labeled percentage
above and maximum points possible
is 100 for the first paper or 125 for the second paper. Note that I count the entire weekend as one day: although you have two days (three, on holiday weekends) to make progress on your work, you are unable to turn your work in because South Hall is locked on weekends. I consider calling the entire weekend one day
a reasonable compromise.
(Those of you who are mathematically inclined may notice that the formula above is actually the formula by which all grades are calculated, including those which incur no penalties.)
If the final exam is not nominally worth 150 points, it will be scaled to 150 points (30% of your course grade) for purposes of this calculation.
Extra credit is available on the midterm and final exams. At her discretion, Professor Waid may offer other extra-credit opportunities.
Small pieces of extra credit are also occasionally offered for providing the best, or the first correct answer to a short question asked on the section Twitter stream. The maximum number of Twitter questions that one student can answer for extra credit during the quarter is five.
Extra credit points are added to the total points for the quarter along with the rest of your assignments.
Grading caveat: Extra credit cannot lift you into the A+ range for the quarter. Any overall grade of A+ that I assign is a "natural" A+. If you have extra credit and land in the A+ range, I assign you an A for the term unless you would have landed in the A+ range without the extra credit.
I add the points for your midterm to the point totals for your final exam, section attendance and participation, and both papers, and assign a final letter grade for the quarter based on the following table:
| If your point total is at least… | but less than … | then your letter grade is… |
|---|---|---|
| 485 | — | A+ |
| 465 | 485 | A |
| 450 | 465 | A- |
| 435 | 450 | B+ |
| 415 | 435 | B |
| 400 | 415 | B- |
| 385 | 400 | C+ |
| 365 | 385 | C |
| 350 | 365 | C- |
| 335 | 350 | D+ |
| 315 | 335 | D |
| 300 | 315 | D- |
| — | 300 | F |
The point totals above are "bright lines" — you either cross them or you don't. I do not round your score, nor do I consider consider getting close to be "good enough." If you have a point total for the quarter of 364.8, for instance, you have a C-, not a C (and have therefore almost certainly not satisfied any breadth requirements that you were trying to satisfy by taking the course).
Please let me know if you have any questions about these calculations!