Grading system of Nursing Ed.

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I was wondering how nursing students are graded, and how easy it is to get a good grade.

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Specializes in Gerontology, nursing education.

It all depends on the course, on the breakdown for grades, on the school's standards, on the individual instructor's guidelines, and on the amount of effort the student puts into the course.

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My program is test only in lecture and pass/fail in clinical. Fail the clinical and you fail the whole course including lecture. Fail the lecture, and you also fail clinical, and must repeat the whole thing. No passing one section and failing the other, only to retake one half of the class. We usually have 4 tests and a final exam for each class. There are papers due in clinical and that is part of the P/F, no grades given for those. There is no extra credit, and no credit is lost for missing or coming in late to lecture. Lab's are considered part of clinical, and coming late or being absent for those will result in penalities that may result in an F in clinical.

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I am curious about other schools, because at my school a 93-100% is an A, an 85-92% is a B, less than 85% is a C and less than 77% is failing. Does anyone else have a grade scale similar? I find it very difficult to get an A in some classes because on a 50 question exam, you can only miss 3 questions to still have an A on that exam. It sucks, your grades definitely take a hit when you're in nursing school :(

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Specializes in Emergency Dept. Trauma. Pediatrics.
I am curious about other schools, because at my school a 93-100% is an A, an 85-92% is a B, less than 85% is a C and less than 77% is failing. Does anyone else have a grade scale similar? I find it very difficult to get an A in some classes because on a 50 question exam, you can only miss 3 questions to still have an A on that exam. It sucks, your grades definitely take a hit when you're in nursing school :(

We are on the same grade scale and our Dosage Calc exams we have to get 100% on but get 3 chances.

Our clinicals and things that encompass those are pass/fail but they go hand in hand. You can pass Clinicals but if you don't pass your class you have to retake it all.

One thing that sucks with that, my class right now for example. We couldn't do IV related stuff until 4 weeks into cliniclas, we had to pass in skills labs first and rather then keep track of who can and can't do them yet they waited until the 3rd try students could have to allow us do them in clinicals. So like for me I passed my IV returns first shot, but it was another 2 weeks before I could do them at clinicals.

Well even if you pass all that and pass clinicals, if you have to retake the class you are back like a new clinical student, You can't do IV"s in clinical until the date for everyone even though you have already passed them and been doing them before in your program.

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I was wondering how nursing students are graded, and how easy it is to get a good grade.

It's not easy, expect to go down a letter grade over other college classes. We were graded on classwork for letter/points. Clinical is pass/fail. Failure in clinical is subjective and can be based on incompetence: failure to know your drugs for you patient, failure to know the basic concept of your patient's disease process, failure to know lab values, failure to preplan properly; attitude: I watched so many students end up out of our program due to either an overconfident attitude or the opposite, I don't care attitude, be argumentative with clinical instructors or just a bad attitude in general; missing a clinical or getting sent home from clinical for failure to wear the uniform properly-no absences were allowed. ( I pushed the envelope once by wearing my pink and white ribbon breast cancer awareness socks-I brought plain white ones with JIC I got caught).

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Specializes in Home Health, Education.

Tarabara, my school's grading system was similar to your's but an A was 90-100, B 80-89, C 70-79, D 60-69, F below 60. A 76 or below in a class or a fail in clinical meant you failed the program. I found this grading system to be fair and maintained a straight A average throughout school. But to the OP, as others have said, it really depends on the school and their regulations/expectations of their students. Hope this answers your question.

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I am curious about other schools, because at my school a 93-100% is an A, an 85-92% is a B, less than 85% is a C and less than 77% is failing. Does anyone else have a grade scale similar? I find it very difficult to get an A in some classes because on a 50 question exam, you can only miss 3 questions to still have an A on that exam. It sucks, your grades definitely take a hit when you're in nursing school :(

That's how I have it as well, although the cutoff for failing for us was 75%. I had a 4.0 prior to starting nursing classes three years ago...not so much anymore :lol2:

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Ours is - 93 to 100 = A, 86 - 92 = B, 80 - 85 = C, less than 80 = F.

There is NO rounding. If you get a 79.99, you fail.

Clinicals are part of the class, not a separate section and like all other NSs I know about, if you fail one, you fail overall. Depending upon the class....we have different requirements. EX: In OB, we had to do a care plan on one OB patient (in post-partum). You had to pass the care plan with an 80 or better. If you didn't you had to do it over until you got the 80 and then all you got was the 80. We had 3 tests worth 190 pts. One final worth 230 points. The HESI was worth 100 pts. We could do the HESI practice quiz and 5 evolve case studies for a total of 25 pts extra credit. The catch was that if you did not get an overall 800 pts or above (out of 1000 pts for the class which makes 800 an 80% and passing), then you didn't get the extra credit points. They could be used to pull you into the next grade (B from C or A from B) but could not be used to pass! In addition, we start every course with a math calc/dosage calc test and you have to get a 90, but it does not get computed into the grade. During OB we had to do research on a related subject. You HAD to do it and present it in clinicals (in front of the hospital staff!), but you got NO grade for it.

The biggest adjustment in NS is the STYLE of the questions. It is not good enough to learn the material. You have to be able to apply it....and some of the questions they ask are obscure!

We lost 3 students in term 1 (out of 24). We didn't lose anyone in term 2. I know of at least 2 in my OB class that failed. (There may be more. The CLASS average was an 82% and with 80% passing......).

I had a 3.78 average in pre-reqs. I have a 3.1 in NS classes. (And I also work FT.)

Hope this helps.

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A= 96-100, A- =90-95, B+ =87-89, B=84-86, B-=80-83, C+77-79, C=74-76

You need to get 74% or better on 4 lecture exams and a final, if you get 73% you fail. Clinical is pass/fail and if you fail you fail the whole class.

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Specializes in NICU.

I was surprised how standard the grading in my school was because I know that it's usually different. A= 89.5-100, B+=84.5-89.49, B= 79.5-84.49

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Specializes in Med/Surg, Academics.

A=92-100

B=84-91

C=75-83

Test/project grades from lecture portion are added up to the tenth decimal place, then rounded to a full percentage point. So, in effect, a 91.5 is an A, but a 91.4 is a B. You fail lecture, you fail the class.

Clinical and lab is P/F. You fail either, you fail the class.

Yeah, it's tough to get an A. You screw up on one test--say get a mid-level B--you have a really hard time getting the A.

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