By Luke Langlois

Hello to all of my student friends. Today, I am here to introduce a handy-dandy tool, www.calculatemygrade.com. Grades are a mystical thing, and, honestly, who knows how to calculate it. Well, the answer is simple. It’s the internet. There are a billion-gazillion grade calculators online. The problem with all of these grade calculators is that they do not adapt to your individual situation. Most of the time, grade calculators are made for specific schools or systems, and they will not adapt to your grading situation. This website adapts to you. It lets you enter your own assignment, the weight of this assignment, and the grade you received on this assignment. This helps you figure out what you need to do grade-wise. Do I need to get a 100% on the next test? How many homework assignments do I need to offset the 5.3% I just received on this test? Well, for those who of us who love their grades, this is the tool. Here is a brief-ish set of instructions.  

When you open up the website, you will see three options: “My overall course grade,” “What grade I need to get on the final exam to get an A, B, C or D,” and “What my new GPA will be after this semester.” Depending on your situation, you’ll pick what you need to pick. For me, the “My Overall Course Grade” option is the best. I have frequently used this option to find out what grade I need on a specific assignment to be where I want to be. So, for the purpose of this post, we’ll dive into that.

After selecting this option and pressing “next,” you will be hit with “is your final grade calculated with points or percentages?” You select how your teacher calculates the grade. For example, I know Ms. Zachik calculates her grades based on points and how many points you receive, so for her class, you’d select points. Most other classes are based on percentage, so for most cases you’d choose that, unless you know your teacher bases their class on points.

After selecting the grading system, you’ll be prompted to enter the quantity of assignments. If you have had two tests, enter two tests. This is pretty self-explanatory. If you want to know what you need on your next assignment to get your grade up to a certain point, add an extra assignment so you can add the hypothetical grade. If you have no assignments for a specific category, enter nothing or a “0.”

After this, you’ll be asked to enter how much each grade is worth. For this, you’ll need to find the syllabus for your class and find out what each assignment is worth.  IMPORTANT NOTE: You need to divide the weight of the category into how many assignments of that category you have had. That was confusing. If your tests are worth 60% of your grade, and you’ve had 3 tests, enter each one as 20% (which is the 60% divided by 3 if you have no idea where that number came from). As another example, if you have 7 homework assignments and those homework assignments are worth 10%, divide that 10 by 7. You’d get 1.4%, and each of the 7 homework assignments is worth 1.4% of your grade. If you enter each of the 7 grades as weighted by 10%, each homework assignment is going to be weighted as 10%, rather than the entire category as 10%. This is important for each assignment category.

Finally, you’ll be asked to enter what grade your assignment received. So, do that. The most handy part about this section is to enter a hypothetical grade for an upcoming assignment. As an example, say I had a 24% in AP Biology, what grade will I need on the next test to raise my grade to an A. Well, in the earlier processes I would add an extra test so I could now enter a hypothetical grade for said test. Then, I would enter in some grades to see if they’d raise me up to the grade I want. After you do this, you should hopefully get a grade that resembles something reasonable. In the case of wanting to raise my grade from 24% to 93, I would need a 300% on my next test. I would recommend entering your actual grades first to see if you’re doing the whole process correctly.

So, in conclusion, this website, www.calculatemygrade.com, will be most useful to you if you are a grade freak. If you’re not, you might keep it in the back of your head for when the final exams come around. Enjoy calculating!  

 

*Disclaimer: I was not paid to write this, but I will welcome any revenue.

Editor: Holden Hartle