I've heard Northeastern's grading scale is kinda unique but I'm not fully clear on it. I'd love it if anyone could break it down for me. Is it competitive?
Northeastern University does indeed have a unique and fairly flexible grading system, which can be a benefit to students as it provides more nuance in how academic performance is evaluated. Here's how it works:
Northeastern operates on a 4.000 scale in which the values for letter grades are as follows:
A:4.000
A-:3.667
B+:3.333
B:3.000
B-:2.667
C+:2.333
C:2.000
C-:1.667
D+:1.333
D:1.000
D-:0.667
F:0.000
What distinguishes Northeastern's system is the '+' and '-' grading, which can reflect a student's performance more accurately than pure letter grades. Northeastern also assigns quality points to each grade (multiplying the course credit hours by the numeric value of the grade), which is used to calculate the semester and cumulative GPA.
As for competitiveness, the grading system itself isn't inherently competitive - what matters more is the difficulty and grading scale of each individual course, as well as the overall culture of your department or program. Generally speaking though, Northeastern has a collaborative culture rather than a cutthroat one.
I hope this helps clarify things a bit!
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