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Re: Nineteenth Century grading system



On Tue, 6 Feb 2001, Glen Taul wrote:

> The grades of students at Georgetown College between 1829 and the early
> 1900s were kept in ledgers and faculty minutes, but they were not letter
> grades as we have today. They were numerical, and the range seems to be from
> 1 to 10. A student, for example, received a 6 in geometry one week, and then
> 5.2 in another. Does anyone have any information on the grading system in
> higher education in nineteenth century America? What do the numbers mean?

At Johns Hopkins, they used a numerical scale of 1 to 5 until around
the early 20th century.  The legend, fortunately, is printed at the
top of the transcript forms in our student records.  1 = excellent,
1.5 = very good, 2 = good, 2.5 = fair, 3 = passed, 4 = failed, and 5 =
very bad.  In the upper ranges of this structure, there were other
fractional increments, much like B+, B and B-.

Why they saw the need to differentiate between 'failed' and 'very bad'
I'm not sure, but this was before grade inflation, when a C meant
'average,' not, "I won't get into med school/law school."  Maybe
'failed' meant, "at least he tried," while 'very bad' meant, "he never
even darkened the door of my classroom.'

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James Stimpert                       E-mail:    James.Stimpert@jhu.edu
Archives (Arts and Sciences)
MSE Library
Johns Hopkins University             Voice:     (410) 516-8323
3400 North Charles Street
Baltimore, MD  21218                 Fax:       (410) 516-7202

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