What Is/ Was your grading scale in nursing school?

[brina]

I have a friend who is in 4th level clinicals in a BSN nursing program. She is supposed to graduate this August. Well she calls me last nite hysterical because her final grade for her Critical Care class was a 79%.... 79.4 to be exact. Well with our schools grading scale, she has failed 4th level clinicals!! The lowest grade that we can have in order to pass is an 80. I feel so bad for her. I am trying to tell her to look on the bright side of things ( that she will be able to repeat 4th level this summer have 5th in the Fall, and graduate in December). But to her, there is no bright side..... and I can totally understand this. It makes me so mad that we are in the middle of this "nursing shortage" yet they let capable and competent people who can fill those positions slip through the cracks based on ONE question!! ONE more correct question on the final would have given her at least a 79.5 and she would have passed. How was everyone else's grading scale in nursing school? For us: 80-85 is a C 86 - 91 is a B 92 to 100 is an A. I know that we should be held to a higher standard because we will have people's lives in our hands, but in the real world an 80 is a B, and for people to fail and flunk out because they made a 79 is ridiculous! I was just curious as to what other nursing schools did. Pray that my friend can somehow put this behind her and continue on to get that RN behind her name...... We really work hard to get those 2 letters.... when I get it, I'm going to guard it like a guard dog! :chuckle

Brina BSN GRADUATE..... DECEMBER 2005

[rjflyn, ASN, RN]

That pretty much was the grading scale for the community college that I went to for nursing school. One exception being clinical was pass/fail there was no score so to speak. It was up to the clinical instructor for each term to decide if you passed or failed. With only a handful of exceptions in 7 quarters I can only think of one or two out of the 100-125 in the class that failed clinicals. Most ended up washing out in the theory portion which had the original posters scale, in which a D for nursing classes was failing.

Rj:rolleyes:

[leo_bsn]

ours is 94-100 A, 87-93 B, 80-86 C, anything below that you fail.

it has been very hard to adjust to this scale. it gets us working harder, but it is frustrating to get a 93 on an exam and have that be a 'B'.

[ckh23, BSN, RN]

That sounds horrible for a grading scale. I'll be graduating in a week and our grading scale is the traditional 70-79 C 80-89-B 90-100 A. And you only need an overall grade of 78 to pass the semester.

[anniesong]

Wow. Reading this is going to make me even less tolerant of all the whining that goes on in my nursing classes. For us the grading is as follows:

Fail=

B-=80-82 B=83-87 B+=87-89

A-=90-92 A=93-100

In order to graduate you must achieve a grade of C or higher in all nursing classes and a cumulative GPA of either 2.0 or 2.5 (I think) of all classes including general education.

[smkiya, BSN, RN]

I should direct some of the students in my class to this topic. Many of them are barely hanging on as our grading scale is:

75-79 C

80-89 B

90-100 A

Our clinicals are also Pass/Fail, and with only six days til finals, I'm anxious for next semester to see how many of the original 52 will be returning. Last semester of 54 students not one of them got an A. I have an A average noe at 89.5, but anything less than a 90 on the final and I get a B. I guess I should just be happy that I'm not failing.

The fact that we're all learning a new testing style should allow for some sort of cushion. You can know the material inside and out, but if you can't answer those questions you're done...

[gerry79]

I am going to tell my fellow classmates to stop complaining! We must get a 73 or above in our nursing classes to pass. The other numbers dont matter much to us. We are using the motto C=RN. Sure we all would like better grades, but this being our first semester, we all are in survival mode! The mean average for our class is a whopping 77! One person thus far has an A, five a B, 23 C or below!

[RN4NICU, LPN, LVN]

Ours was the traditional university scale

90-100 = A

80-89 = B

70-79 = C

60-69 = D

Below 60 = F

Catch was, you could not progress in the program if you got below a B, so we still had to have 80% or above. And, yes, we had several people fail with averages just below 80% (I think there were a couple with a 79.6 and a 79.8. There were several with averages between 78-80 that failed). It isn't pleasant, but there HAS to be a definite line drawn somewhere in order for things to be fair to everyone. If they let a 79.5 slide by, what about the 79, that is just another half a point. Then, a 78 is just one point less than the 79. If the other point didn't make any difference, why should that one? See what I mean.

[jdkaos]

My grading scale was also 80% or fail. I agree that it is more difficult, but the schools pass rate on board Is 99%. The thing that I tell nursing students is to give up a striving for the A all the time. When you do graduate and pass boards no one cares what the grades were, only that you have a degree in hand. :cheers:

[Krysten]

our class scale is:

75-84 = C

85-89 = B

90-100 = A

Our clinicals are pass/fail also BUT you have to have a 100% on the math test every year

My school is changing their req and their grading scale. You will need a 80 to pass the class.

[live4today, RN]

ours is 94-100 A, 87-93 B, 80-86 C, anything below that you fail.

it has been very hard to adjust to this scale. it gets us working harder, but it is frustrating to get a 93 on an exam and have that be a 'B'.

same scale used at my alma mater too. :)

[BeachNurse]

Mine was the same as the above. Anything less than 80 was failing. I found out that those who struggled with this grading scale were also the same people who failed the NCLEX at least once.