Grading Policies

• Graded work
• Late submissions
• Regrade requests
• Overall course grades
• Exams matter most

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

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 at most five undergraduate CAs, under the supervision of a graduate TA, using detailed and standardized rubrics. Under normal circumstances, homework should be graded within two weeks of submission, and we will strive to complete it within one week.
• 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. Again, standard rubrics for many problem types are already available.

No late submissions

Summary

• We will not accept late guided problem sets on PrairieLearn (except in extreme documented circumstances.)
• We will not accept late written homework for any reason.

Details

• PrairieLearn will continue to accept and score submissions on guided problem sets after the deadline (typically Monday at 9pm), but only answers submitted before the deadline contribute to your course grade.
• Gradescope automatically stops accepting written homework solutions at the deadline (which will always be Tuesday at 9pm unless an exception is explicitly announced.) You can replace your submission as often as you like before the deadline; only your last submission before the deadline will actually be graded. We strongly recommend submitting something well before the deadline, to avoid any last-second emergencies.
• To offset the downsides of such a draconian late work policy, we will use only the highest 9 guided problem set scores (out of 10) and 18 numbered homework problem scores (out of 22) when calculating final grades.
• We may also forgive coursework under extreme circumstances that prevent the submission of a significant fraction of the homework, such as a documented disability, illness, injury, or other emergency. We will compute your final course grade as if your forgiven assignments do not exist; your other coursework will have more weight. Students requiring accommodation for a disability should first contact DRES. Please ask Emily for further details.

Explanation

• In principle, PrairieLearn can support automatically penalizing late submissions. However, the way it supports such penalties is to stop additional points from counting toward the total percentage once it reaches a specified amount. For example, attempting to set a late “penalty” of 50% would mean somebody who has earned 49% by the deadline can hope to earn only one additional percentage point after the deadline, and somebody who has 60% before the deadline cannot earn any additional percentage points after the deadline. We’re afraid that this system leaves little incentive to finish work after the deadline and could even result in somebody accidentally limiting their total score, because they assume incorrectly that they can get partial credit on additional work they put off to after the deadline.
• All lab, written homework, and exam solutions should be available within 24 hours of it being possible to release them so the assignment is still fresh in students’ minds and to minimize context-switching as we move on to each subsequent weeks’ material. Allowing late homework submissions makes this ideal impossible.

Regrade requests

If you believe that your score for any homework or exam problem is inconsistent with the published grading rubric, you can request a regrade.

• Submit regrade requests for homework and exams on Gradescope. If you have questions or concerns about any grade, we 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 why the problem was graded incorrectly. (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. Arguing that you showed some basic understanding of relevant techniques or the given problem is unlikely to result any points being awarded. Points are only awarded for making tangible progress toward a solution as described in the rubrics.

• 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 will be final, and it could be higher or lower than your old grade.

Overall course grades

We will determine final course grades using the following algorithm. (What do you expect from a CS theory course?)

1. Compute total scores from guided problem sets, homeworks, and exams.

   • Guided Problem Sets and Homework = 35% 
     • We will count 9 guided problem sets (out of 11 total) and 18 numbered homework problems (out of 22 total), dropping lowest scores if you submit more. (Due to scheduling constraints, we will release Homework 12 as ungraded optional practice.)
     • Each guided problem set and each numbered homework problem is worth approximately 1.3% 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; the other exams will have more weight in the overall grade computation.
     • We will not drop zero grades that result from cheating offenses.

2. 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 last rule rarely applies to more than one student out of 400
   • Any student who does not take the final exam or conflict final exam will be given an exam score of zero, and their overall course grade will be computed normally. These students should request an Incomplete from their college (see the policies and instructions from Grainger and LAS ) and take the makeup final early next semester.

3. 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.

   • 98% ≤ A+
   • 90% ≤ A < 98%
   • 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%

4. 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.

5. 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 who had a higher curved letter grade in Spring 2026 was 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. Last semester:

• Over 95% of students had guided problem set averages over 90%.
• Nearly 90% of students had homework averages over 90%.
• Over 95% of students had homework averages over 80%.

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

• 101.4% ≤ A+
• 89.1% ≤ A ≤ 101.4%
• 81.4% ≤ A– < 89.1%
• 73.7% ≤ B+ < 81.4%
• 66.0% ≤ B   < 73.7%
• 58.3% ≤ B– < 66.0%
• 50.6% ≤ C+ < 58.3%
• 42.9% ≤ C   < 50.6%
• 35.3% ≤ C– < 42.9%
• 27.6% ≤ D+ < 35.3%
• 19.9% ≤ D   < 27.6%
• 12.2% ≤ D– < 19.9%
•   0.0% ≤ F   < 12.2%