Grading Policies

Graded work
Extension requests
Regrade requests
Overall course grades
Exams matter most

If you have any questions or concerns, please ask in lecture, during office hours, or on Piazza.

Graded work

Guided problem sets are auto-graded on PrairieLearn.
Homeworks are graded by TAs and CAs on Gradescope. To keep grading consistent, each numbered problem is graded by two (or in extreme cases three) undergraduate CAs, under the supervision of a graduate TA, using detailed and standardized rubrics. Under normal circumstances, homework should be graded within one week of submission.
Exams are graded by the instructors and graduate TAs, also on Gradescope, using nearly identical rubrics as the homeworks. Under normal circumstances, exams should be graded within two weeks.
Under normal circumstances, homework and exam solutions are posted within 24 hours of the corresponding submission deadline. All homework and exam solutions include the rubrics used by the graders. Standard rubrics for many problem types are already available.

Regrade requests

If you believe that your score for any homework or exam problem is inconsistent with the published grading rubric, or that you were graded more harshly than other students for similar work, you can request a regrade.

Submit regrade requests for homework and exams on Gradescope. If you have questions or concerns about any grade, we strongly encourage you talk with the course staff before submitting a regrade request. However, no grades will be changed in any student's presence; you must submit an official request through Gradescope.
Regrade requests can be submitted up to two weeks after the graded work is released on Gradescope. Regrade requests for the final exam can be submitted up to three weeks after graded exams are released. However, final-exam regrade requests (and any other requests still outstanding after the final exam) will only be considered if a successful regrade would change the student's course grade.
All regrade requests must include a brief written justification for the request. (Fill in the appropriate textbox on Gradescope.) Good justifications include the following:
- My answer agrees with the posted solution, but I still lost points.
- I lost 4 points for an incorrect time analysis, but the rubric says that's only worth 2 points.
- You took off points for missing the base case, but it's right here.
- My answer is correct, even though it does not match the posted solution.
- There is no explanation for my grade.
- The grading for this problem is bonkers. Please regrade it from scratch.
Regrade requests with poor or missing justifications will be denied.
We can only grade what you actually submitted. You cannot get a higher grade by explaining what you meant, either in person or in writing; your original submission must stand on its own.
Most grading mistakes should be corrected after the first regrade request. We reserve the right to treat subsequent regrade requests for the same problem as requests to grade the problem again. To handle those requests, we will unmark all rubric items and delete all markup in Gradescope, and then give the problem to a different grader to grade from scratch. Your new grade could be higher or lower than your old grade.

Overall course grades

We will determine final course grades as follows. (What do you expect from an algorithms course?)

Compute total scores from guided problem sets, homeworks, and exams.
- Guided Problem Sets and Homework = 35%
  - We will count 9 guided problem sets and 16 numbered homework problems, dropping lowest scores if you submit more.
  - Thus, each guided problem set and each numbered homework problem is worth 1.4% of your overall grade.
- Exams = 65%
  - Each midterm has five problems, and the final exam has seven problems. All 17 exam problems have equal weight.
  - Each exam problem is worth approximately 3.8% of your overall grade.
- Exceptions:
  - Forgiven homework will be treated as if it did not exist; submitted homeworks will have more weight in the overall grade computation. In exceptional cases, we may compute course grades based entirely on exams.
  - Forgiven midterms will be treated as if they did not exist; their other exams will have more weight in the overall grade computation.
  - We will not drop zero grades that result from cheating offenses.
Problem cases.
- We reserve the right to give an F to any student meeting at least one of the following criteria:
  - Overall exam average below 25%
  - Submitted less than half of the assigned homework problems
  - Otherwise does not appear to making a good-faith effort
  This rule rarely applies to more than one student out of 400.
- Anyone who misses both the regular final exam and the conflict final exam will be given an ABS (“absent from final”), which is equivalent to an F, unless they get an Incomplete from their college. (See the policies and insructions from Grainger and LAS.)
Determine fixed letter grades, according to the following cutoffs. Each possible letter grade between A– and D– covers an interval of length 5%. We reserve the right to lower these cutoffs. A+s will be awarded only under extraordinary circumstances.
- 90% ≤ A
- 85% ≤ A– < 90%
- 80% ≤ B+ < 85%
- 75% ≤ B < 80%
- 70% ≤ B– < 75%
- 65% ≤ C+ < 70%
- 60% ≤ C < 65%
- 55% ≤ C– < 60%
- 50% ≤ D+ < 55%
- 45% ≤ D < 50%
- 40% ≤ D– < 45%
- 0% ≤ F < 40%
As a backup, we will also compute letter grades according to the following curve.
- The mean is a borderline B–/C+.
- Each standard deviation is worth one full letter grade.
For example, the B+/B cutoff is 2/3 standard deviations above the mean, and the D/D– cutoff is 5/3 standard deviations below the mean. The fixed cutoffs are consistent with a mean of 70% and a standard deviation of 15%. The actual mean has been higher than 70% for several years.
Each student's actual letter grade is the maximum of their fixed letter grade and their curved letter grade. The total number of past students with a higher curved letter grade is 0 (zero).

Exams matter most

Historically, even when students were graded exclusively on a curve, grades in CS 374 have been almost entirely determined by exam scores. In a typical semester:

About 95% of students have guided-problem-set averages over 90%.
About two-thirds of students have homework averages over 90%.
About 90% of students have homework averages over 80%.

The following scatterplot shows the distribution of homework averages (x-coordinate) versus total exam scores (y-coordinate) for Fall 2023. Notice especially the outliers in the bottom right; one student had a homework average over 95% but an exam average under 25%.

Assuming a total GPS average of 95% and a homework average of 90%, the fixed grade cutoff translate to the following approximate exam averages:

89.0% ≤ A
81.3% ≤ A– < 89.0%
73.6% ≤ B+ < 81.3%
66.0% ≤ B < 73.6%
58.3% ≤ B– < 66.0%
50.6% ≤ C+ < 58.3%
42.9% ≤ C < 50.6%
35.2% ≤ C– < 42.9%
27.5% ≤ D+ < 35.2%
20.0% ≤ D < 27.5%
12.1% ≤ D– < 20.0%
0.0% ≤ F < 12.1%