Our Wacky Grading Scale

One of the best times I had in grad school was a seminar taught by my doctoral advisor Jason Turner, who graded us on a funny scale.

At Arizona, the grades we got on assignments already didn’t matter, if they were graded at all. Faculty told us early on that experimenting—and failing in so doing—was learning for graduate students; to encourage this, they made it a departmental norm to give all of us A’s unless something was seriously awry.

My advisor went one step further: Even if his grades didn’t matter in the end, they could still serve a powerful pedagogical function—to signal to us how we were progressing as we learned to become scholars and produce work of publishable quality. If getting a ‘10’ meant “publish this as is” then, a 7 or even an 8 gave first- and second-year PhD students something to feel proud of. These numbers no longer held the same meanings as a ‘C’ or ‘B.’

This blew my mind and changed my life. I was not just born a perfectionist; I was socialized into one. Hell, one of my biggest regrets in college was getting an A- in my first semester so I couldn’t graduate with a perfect GPA—now I think of it, that was so messed up! Through his wacky grading scale, my advisor taught us to be comfortable with trying to be good enough for where we are and where we want to be.

I’d love to try something similar in our class. Really, think of this as a 7-point scale: if your goal is an A, aim for a 7.

10: Perfection (impossible).
9.5: This is among the best philosophy I’ve ever read (think Plato).
9.0: Polished journal article; “publishable.”
8.5: Excellent seminar paper by PhD students.
8.0: This is truly so good; it goes well beyond my expectations for undergraduate students.
7.5: Unusually notable work; it is powerful, sophisticated, insightful, engaging, and beautifully executed.
7.0: Highly impressive work. Not only is it thoughtful, well-written, and genuinely reflective of the serious effort that went into it, but it extends our class discussions in interesting ways.
6.5: Very strong work that shows a ton of promise. There are moments of genuine insight that, if developed more fully, would make the work stand out even more.
6.0: Fully competent work that demonstrates a clear, nuanced grasp of the relevant materials. While there may be some minor mistakes, misunderstandings, or obscurities here and there, they are nothing too serious.
5.5: Solid work—does what it’s asked to do and shows an overall good understanding of the relevant materials. But perhaps the point it’s making might be a little too obvious in a way that does not go that far beyond our class discussions, perhaps some aspect of the analysis or argument feels rather undeveloped or superficial, perhaps there are some notable mistakes or misunderstandings, perhaps the writing can sometimes be hard to follow, etc.
5.0: This is where the problems start to get close to either the “not sure I get it” or the “this might be missing the point” territory. Usually, this has to do with some major misunderstanding of the readings, our class discussions, the prompt, and/or the instructions. Two particularly common mistakes are work (1) consisting largely of unargued/unsupported opinions and (2) largely uninformed by our class discussions.
4.5: This is where the writing starts not to make sense. It may not be clear what’s going on. The writing may be difficult to get through. But overall the work is still responsive to the prompt.
4.0 and below: Work that (1) is not relevant, (2) fails to follow the prompt/instructions, or (3) engages in academic misconduct (e.g., plagiarism).