Introduction

As students, regardless of your commitment to academic rigor, we can’t avoid being graded. To be a student is to have every piece of your submitted work picked apart, edited, and scored. However, you’ve definitely noticed more than one way for these grades to be delivered. The academic world has seen the rise of number, letter, and mastery grading, which can make it fairly confusing to wrap your head around your grade. Today, I want to explore these different grading systems, and see how they compare to each other.

Number Grading

The first grading system I want to talk about is the classic number scale, a percentage of our accuracy from 0-100. This structure has a lot of benefits, most of which pertain to its ease of use. Simply put, humans understand numbers. We know that a 19/20 is a 95%, and we know how good that 95% is compared to a 62%. Receiving numbers as our grades is very important, intuitively allowing us to see just how well or poorly we performed on an assignment. There is a reason that when the other frameworks are used, they need to be converted to numbers anyway. Number grades are needed in order to calculate weights for assignments and GPAs, which proves difficult when you need to average a B and a C-. 

While its benefits lie in its objectivity, this system could prove harsh for the same reason. The lack of rounding and room for subjectivity in numbers sometimes lead to increased pressure and mental health issues, due to the lack of “wiggle room” for actual scoring. The simplicity of numbers result in detriments toward student health, which is a weakness in the already increased pressure of higher education. 

Letter Grading

The second most universal grading structure is the letter system, scoring us through letters A-D, and then F for failure (Fun Fact; this is why there is no E, aside from parents thinking it meant excellent). While I mention the simplicity of numbers, a commonly touted benefit of letter grades is that they are also very simple. Depending on the way a person thinks, it's not out of the question for them to see letter grades as more intuitive and simple than numbers. For example, we use “straight A student” as someone that consistently strives for perfection, while people view Ds and Fs as subpar. Compared to the number scale, its increased subjectivity (through rounding) can increase student confidence, as people generally think of a B as better than an 84%. It's easy to raise average scores through the lens of this subjectivity, which increases student wellness as a whole.

While letter grades certainly have their benefits, there are ways that number grades can be more beneficial to students than the standard letters. Generally speaking, letter grades make it more difficult to track student progress and mastery as opposed to numbers. For example, a shot from a 70% to an 86% can be seen as a large, 16% jump in someone’s grade, while it could be seen as just a one letter jump from a C- to a B. Additionally, letter grades are simply less accurate than numbers. While it isn’t “dishonesty” in the grading policies, it could be seen as misleading seeing grades being changed by 4-5 percentage points due to the inability to create these finer nuances in student performance.

Mastery Grading

The last grading system I wish to cover is the semi-newcomer, the mastery grading system. There isn’t really a concrete way that this system is implemented throughout different schools, though it typically uses words like “developing,” “approaching,” “mastery,” and sometimes “excellence.” This framework breaks away even further from objectivity in the grading scales, as it is built upon the belief that all students learn and grow at their own pace. This metric is strong due to its ability to focus on an individual student’s progress, something that is lacking in the competition that is bound to occur in everyday school life.

While the more cultivation-focused approach to mastery grading is a pretty strong upside, its complete lack of objectivity could also be seen as a negative in a few regards. The belief that all students learn at different rates could buckle under the time crunch to complete every assignment given for a certain semester, which could be seen as an increased pressure for students in the long term due to lack of ability to enforce time management. Additionally, its increased flexibility could pose issues for instructors, as the self-paced nature means that students are learning different pieces of the content at different times, or they are simply at completely different aptitudes by the end of the semester. 

Conclusion

Across the different grading systems, there are a few trends that I notice. The first is that increased objectivity in the grades leads to enhanced student pressure, while increased flexibility leads to less push to perform at the highest caliber for the school system. Another trend that I notice is that many of the flaws amongst the more flexible student metrics stem from their inability to express a wide range of grades, with letters having ~13 values and mastery having ~5, as opposed to the 100 for number grades. 

For my final thoughts, I would like to mention that the downsides of each evaluation method are too much to use just one for an entire school on its own. While it certainly is confusing, the alternatives of having entirely odd scoring metrics or overly objective ones aren’t any better, so utilizing mastery or letter grades could be beneficial for smaller-scale assignments (i.e. homework or classwork). However, my final belief is that number grading systems should be the primary, with the other systems as secondary supplements to simplify some aspects of the grading/review process for teachers or other administrators.

Works Cited

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DCS grading programs — letter grades, https://www.teach.cs.toronto.edu/~clarke/grade/lettergrades.shtml. Accessed 5 April 2025.

“Academic Regulations < Columbia College.” Columbia University, https://bulletin.columbia.edu/columbia-college/regulations/#examsandgradestext. Accessed 5 April 2025.

“Exploring Traditional Grading Systems: Pros, Cons, And Alternatives.” Strobel Education, 18 February 2023, https://strobeleducation.com/blog/exploring-traditional-grading-systems. Accessed 5 April 2025.

Fischer, Max. “Effects Of Grading System On Students: Pros And Cons.” UoPeople, 19 June 2024, https://www.uopeople.edu/blog/effects-of-grading-system-on-students/. Accessed 5 April 2025.

“What are the Pros and Cons of Teachers Giving Letter Grades?” Point Loma Nazarene University, https://www.pointloma.edu/resources/education/what-are-pros-cons-teachers-giving-letter-grades?market_source=summit. Accessed 5 April 2025.

“What is Mastery Grading? | Center for Transformative Teaching | Nebraska.” Center for Transformative Teaching, https://teaching.unl.edu/resources/alternative-grading/mastery-grading/. Accessed 5 April 2025.