Rounding up grades

elkpark · Dec 20, 2007

The schools (of nursing) in which I've taught have not "rounded up". The grade is the grade.

Wsmith16, ADN, BSN · Dec 20, 2007

Seems normal to me--my school doesn't round up either.

donsterRN, ASN, BSN · Dec 20, 2007

I think your school is typical. Here, what we get is what we earned. No rounding up...

fmrnicumom · Dec 20, 2007

Mine does not round either. I ended up with an A- in a class (worth 3.7 instead of 4.0 - lost my 4.0 GPA; 40% of our grade was group work and it was an online class) and I was only 0.01 away from getting an A. I think most schools do not round. Some professors will round up before reporting grades, but most I've had do not.

I'm sorry you missed an A by such a small amount, but you should still be proud of yourself! Good luck next semester!

Tiffany

studently42 · Dec 20, 2007

I've just finished my first semester of NS and missed getting an A by 0.5 point. Our school doesn't round up either. Working full time and going to NS is difficult, but I did the best I could and that's all I could do. If I get a question that says "choose all that apply", I always get it wrong. :uhoh21:

PeachyERNurse, BSN, RN · Dec 20, 2007

Wow. I think it's crazy that some schools don't round up. At my school, if you had a 0.5 or higher, your grade was rounded up to the next number. 0.4 and below, no rounding. Doesn't make sense to NOT round up considering we've been taught since elementary school that if you have a number of something .5, you always round up to the next number:uhoh3:

Alternator81 · Dec 20, 2007

My school uses points method. For instance, there will be a total of 800 points worth of material given out t--400 points for clinical and 400 points for theory (4 tests of 100 points). If you want an A, you need 716 points of higher, so there is no rounding. I think it is very fair.

ShiphrahPuah · Dec 20, 2007

I just lost my 4.0 average because I missed an A by a few tenths of a percent. It's extremely frustrating, but I am willng to say that there needs to be a cutoff somewhere.

However, I am VERY discouraged that so much of our work does not count toward the grade. I got an excellent review from my clinical instructor, but that counts NOTHING toward the grade even though we spend as much time in clinical as we do in class. I write extremely detailed care plans and have received comments that they are thorough and extremely well done, but they count NOTHING toward the grade even though I take 8 to 10 hours per week to write them up. We can fail the course if we don't do well in clinical or if we blow off care plans, but if we do well in these, it doesn't even inch our grade up a few tenths of a percent. I feel very demotivated to apply myself next semester (my final semester, thank God!).

I do see a lot of great nurses out there during clinical, but I see a lot of mediocre and crummy ones as well. I just wonder if nursing school takes really hardworking people (it's difficult to get into most programs) and then just demotivates and demotivates them so that by the time they get out, just doing the bare minimum to get by becomes the norm.

How about you guys -- do care plans count for any thing other than failure if you don't do them well? Do you get any credit toward your grade when you do a great job on them?

ZooMommyRN, ADN, RN · Dec 20, 2007

Ours rounds, luckily I've never had to worry about being rounded up to pass but know several who have each and every semester, I couldn't stand the stress of a low B in fundamentals before the final and busted my butt to stay above an 85% so I don't know how they are still sane after several semesters on the bubble

danh3190 · Dec 20, 2007

We don't round up either. At the beginning of each class we learn how many total points there are and we know that 92% of that number of points is an "A". Since my coursework is usually better than my clinical work, I for one am glad they just do that Pass/Fail and don't calculate it in to the final grade.

Jules A, MSN · Dec 20, 2007

I just finished my first semester. I had an overall grade of 93.6 percent in Pharm. You need 94 to make an A, so I missed an A by .4 of a percent. My school does not round up grades, otherwise I would have had an A. Is this a normal trend with other schools, or is it just mine?

That stinks! Don't feel bad, our school doesn't round either and people have failed with as little as 0.3 off.