Grading Policy

Students receive both a letter and number grade - for example, 85B. Grades are assigned according to the following scale:

Letter Grade	Numerical Grade	Point Value
A	93-100	4.0
A-	90-92	3.7
B+	87-89	3.3
B	83-86	3.0
B-	80-82	2.7
C+	77-79	2.3
C	70-76	2.0
D	65-69	1.0
E	60-64	0.0

The Moritz College of Law uses letter grades to determine academic good standing, probation, dismissal, and graduation.

The numerical grades are used to rank students.  Upper level classes are weighted twice as much as first year classes with regards to numerical average.

Class rankings are completed once a year after all grades have been submitted.

Individual class ranks are printed on the transcripts of the top 5 percent of each class.

The remainder of the class is not given individual class ranks. Instead, the college distributes a grade distribution sheet for each class that shows the numerical grade range for each percentage range in ranking for the top half of the class.

What is the Grading System?

Anonymity
Some classes, such as seminars and clinics, are such that evaluation must be done on a name-identified basis. However, exam grading is done anonymously. You will receive an exam number for each exam you take. This number will be placed on your exam in place of your name.

Your professors do not have access to which student corresponds with which exam number until final grades have been recorded. The Registrar's office employee who computes the scores for professors is the one who will eventually return the final grades for each student by name to the professors.

In some classes, your professor may include factors for which anonymity is not possible, such as class participation or a paper in the overall course grade. In some situations, the professor turns in the name-identified grade to the Assistant Dean for Curricular Affairs who will then combine those scores with the anonymously graded exam scores. In other situations, the professor adds participation grades after viewing a list of exam scores by name.

Grade Distribution Policy
In an effort to treat all students fairly, the Moritz College of Law has a long-standing grade distribution policy. The underlying reasons for the policy are to promote a common faculty-wide grading standard and to reduce instances in which different professors use different grading standards.

In rare situations, students who experience serious health problems immediately prior to or during an exam period find it necessary to delay taking an exam until after grades must be turned in. In these circumstances, anonymity may not be possible.

The college's policy suggests the following grade distribution to the teachers of first-year courses:

• A's - 30 percent
• B's - 60 percent
• C's - 10 percent
• D's and E's - Not more than 4 percent with the direction that a D or E should be given only when inferior performance is clearly demonstrated

For second- and third-year courses, the grade distribution is based on the past average letter grade performance of the students as a whole who registered for a particular course. A professor receives a grade distribution for the students enrolled in his or her course that semester.

There are no names on the grade distribution, so the profile in no way focuses on an individual student. For example, an Evidence professor might receive a distribution stating that, based on past performance, 20 students would be expected to receive As; 30 students would be expected to receive Bs; and 15 students would be expected to receive Cs.

The professor then uses the profile as a tool to assess whether grade distributions in that class roughly reflect distributions in other classes. The profile is a suggested tool and is not mandatory. Professors combine the profile with past years' experience grading to form an accurate picture of how the class grade distribution should look.

Because the profile is such a successful tool, most professors do not deviate from it in more than minor ways. In fact, to ensure fair and standard grading across the student body, the Associate Dean for Faculty reviews the grade distributions for each course and makes inquiries when there are major deviations from the suggested profile.

Professors are advised to give the profile more weight in larger classes in which its guidance would seem to have more validity.

What Happens Between the Time My Professor Grades the Exam and I Receive My Grades?
In the usual case, after a professor evaluates all the exams, he or she will turn in the raw scores to the computer analyst. Then the analyst will compute how the grades might be distributed, given the class's grade distribution. The professor receives this information and evaluates it.

At this point, everything is still anonymous. If the professor feels the overall distribution is too low or too high, he or she has the discretion to make adjustments as appropriate. The changes are given to the analyst again and the distribution is reconfigured.

Finally, the grades are matched up with student names and given to the Associate Dean for Faculty, who, after approving the grades, passes the grades on to the Assistant Dean for Curricular Affairs for release to the professor and to the students. Grades are available on-line.