Instructions on How to Estimate Your Final Semester Score Weighting
To estimate your final grade, remember that you must weight each grading item per the
syllabus weighting. You should base your weighting on your % score for each grading
item, not your points.
For example, if the mid-term exam is worth a total of 44 points, and if you scored 36 out of 44,
then that is an 81.8% (36 divided by 44). If the mid-term exam is weighted 25% of your
semester grade, thus you would have earned 81.8%*25%=20.45% towards your semester grade
percentage. Likewise, if the final exam has 30 possible points and you score 26 out of 30, then
that is an 86.67%. If the final exam is weighted 25% of your semester grade, then you would
have earned 86.67%*25%=21.67% towards your semester grade %. You need to do that for
each syllabus grading area (exams, quizzes, project and homework) and then add up all of your
weighted percentages to get your final semester % earned. The total possible is 100% (which
would mean you received 100% on all of your graded materials) and the cut-off for A-F letter
grades is listed in the syllabus. Let’s say, for example, you earned the following weighted
percentages (as calculated per the above example) for each grading item:
Exam 1
Final exam
Quizzes
Project
Homework
Semester Total
20.45%
21.67%
13.50%
21.25%
9.50%
86.37% [Semester grade of “B” since it falls within the 80%-89% range]