Grade Table Overview

A variety of criteria exists for grading courses. Some schools use a simple format (A, B, C, D, F) while others award plus and minus grades (A+, A, A-, B+). Others may use a numeric grading system (1 - 100). For this reason, Registration provides a Grade Table that allows you to define your institution's grades and the attributes of each grade.

This two-character code allows you to have more than one set of valid grades. For example, you may have different grading scales for different colleges. The Law School may use a numeric grading system while the rest of the institution uses a letter grading system.

This two-character code identifies the nature of the credit being given for the course, such as letter grade, pass/fail, and audit.

This three-character code identifies the scholastic rating the professor awarded to the student.

The Grade Table contains an entry for each valid combination of Grade Scale, Credit Type, and Grade. For each combination, you define the attributes that the programs will use to calculate GPA and generate reports. You are allowed to use a blank credit type when creating a Grade Table row. Although a blank grade code could be used for Grade Table rows, it should be done only with special credit type codes (never both blank credit type and blank grade code).

Each of the entries on the Grade Table controls how the Academic Record Update process will update the Student Course History with that grade.

The Grade Table is also used by the Financial Aid Manager module's Calculate Satisfactory Progress activity to calculate Attempted Hours, Earned Hours, and GPS Hours for Financial Aid SAP. These are detailed in the next section (Grade Table Attributes).

Grade Table Attributes

The following Grade Table attributes can be selected in Registration and will have a direct impact on statistics that are generated in Advising:

The Advising module uses this column to determine if a Student Curse History satisfies a general requirement. Select this checkbox if this Grade Table entry satisfies a general requirement.

The Advising module uses this column to determine if a Student Course History has satisfied a degree plan requirement. Select this checkbox if this Grade Table entry satisfies a degree plan requirement.

The system uses this column in two places:

1. 1. 1. 1. It uses grade priority to determine which grade to use when it processes best grade repeated course logic.
        
        The Advising module uses this column in the Status Update process to determine if the student has met minimum grade requirements. Valid ranking numbers are 5-95 with 95 representing the highest ranking.

This column is used in the Grade Report and Transcript 2000 in Registration and the Graduation Report and Student Course Needs Letter in Advising. If this column does not contain a value, then the Grade Code column in the Grade Table is used.

This column is used for repeat courses in the Grade Report and Transcript 2000 in Registration and the Graduation Report and Student Course Needs Letter in Advising. If this column does not contain a value, then the Grade Code column in the Grade Table is used.

Career GPA columns include Add to attempted hours, Add to earned hours, Add to GPA hours, and Quality Points. For each Grade Table entry, you must identify how courses with this Grade Scale, Credit Type, and Grade will update the student's academic grid.

Term GPA columns include Add to term attempted, Add to term earned, and Add to term GPA hours. Term GPA columns typically contain the same values as the Career GPA columns; however, you may want to designate grades that will show in the Term GPA totals but not in the Career GPA totals. Repeated courses or forgiven courses are situations where term and career totals may be different.

This column indicates whether this grade satisfies course prerequisites. Online registration checks previous student courses to see if the student has taken the required course and has received a satisfactory grade. For example, a letter grade of A satisfies prerequisites while a grade of F does not.

If your institution does not have a grade that automatically places a student on the probation list, do not select this option on the Grade Table. You may have a probation policy that states a student who receives a certain grade is automatically placed on probation. This column allows you to specify those grades; and by selecting this option, the grade will be added to the Probation hour total column on the Student Term Summary by Division table. This will then trigger the Academic Standing Update program to place the student on probation regardless of other GPA information.

If your institution does not have a grade that automatically places a student on the honors list, do not select this option on the Grade Table. This column allows you to eliminate certain grades from the honors list determination. For example, some institutions eliminate Pass/Fail hours when they determine the honors status. By selecting this option, the grade will be added to the Honors hour total column on the Student Term Summary by Division table. You should use this column if honors are determined by an hour count other than hours attempted, hours earned, GPA hours, or PT/FT hours.

If your institution does not have a grade that automatically disqualifies a student from the honors list, do not select this option on the Grade Table. Some honors policies eliminate students who have received a grade below a C, regardless of the GPA. Select this column to flag those grades that automatically eliminate a student from the honors list. This will check the Ineligible for honors column on the Student Term Summary by Division table which will then trigger the academic standing update program to disqualify the student for term honors, regardless of other GPA information.

An end-of-term report of special grades can be generated. This report allows you to quickly see those student courses that may need your attention each term. For example, grades of F and I (incomplete) are often included on the Special Grades Report. You may also want to include repeat grades on the Special Grades Report.

These columns control which grades and headers appear in the ten columns of the Grade Distribution Report. Enter the column number for each Grade Table entry and enter the column header you want to appear in that column.

The Financial Aid Manager module uses this column to determine if a grade should count towards Financial Aid Enrolled hours, which is determined via Credit Hours Update/Report. This column will affect the calculations in the Financial Aid Manager module only, not any Registration functions.

FA (Financial Aid) SAP (Satisfactory Academic Progress) Information affects only the Financial Aid Manager module's Calculate Satisfactory Progress activity and not any Registration functions. Setting these values will not update any data columns in the various Registration summary tables.

FA SAP columns include Add to attempted hours, Add to earned hours, and Add to GPA hours. For each Grade Table entry, you must identify how courses with this Grade Scale, Credit Type, and Grade will update the student's financial aid satisfactory academic progress calculation.