The Student Room Group

Adjusting grade boundaries

Sorry if this has already been posted but i was just wondering how they can change the grade boundaries. I thought all a-levels were set at 80% for an A, 70% for a B, etc therefore they must covert them into UMS but I just don't understand how it works.

Say out of 100 I got 76 on an exam, normally this is a B, but if theey lowered the grade boundary to 75 for an A, how does this translate into UMS marks?

Thanks for any answers
Reply 1
I don;t know to be honest, I have actually looked at past years grade boundaries, and they did not always add up to 80%, but they somehow converted the UMS marks.

Sorry, if this wasn't helpful!

Josh
Reply 2
I think what it means is that the UMS marks will always add up to the correlating percentage. For example out of 100 (UMS) if you get 80....then you will acheive an A...i.e 80%. The raw marks can be made lower or higher....Therefore you can still get an A even if you don't get 80 % on an exam....if they decide that that raw mark should be set to 80 in UMS marks.

I don't know if that makes any sense.....I can't really explain it properly.
Reply 3
i think i understand what you mean.. but not all papers are out of 100 so if u dont get bang on the grades was wondering how they work that out! must all be legit... just a bit confusing on students part!
Reply 4
I think that they take your mark from your paper and then depending on how everyone else does they are converted into different UMS scores. So if everyone does badly in the paper you may only need to get 70% in the actual paper but this could be converted into a UMS score of 80 out of 100 so you would get an A.
Hope this makes sense......
Well it's quite simple.

You get RAW marks on your paper. Say your paper is out of 75, 80% of 75 is 60/75 to get an A. But depending on how everyone else does, they might lower it so you need say 55/75 RAW MARKS (i.e. your actual marks) to get an A (80%).

What this now means is that 55 RAW MARKS are equal to 60 UMS. So the grade boundaries are fixed at 80,70,60% and so on for UMS, but the number of RAW MARKS that equals the UMS varies depending on how everyone performs. Hope that helps.
It will vary from paper to paper, but in a physics exam a couple of years ago, you could work out your UMS from your raw mark but doing the following:

Take your Raw mark and subtract 25. Multiply this result by 1.25 and then add on 25. Obviously if you end up with over 100, or less than 0 then you stick at those boundaries. If you had 65 out of 90, then you take 25 to get 40, multiply by 1.25 to get 50, then add on 25 to get 75% UMS.

It's a stupid system really, but the only fair way if we must use the module method of examination.
Reply 7
confuuuusing!
Ok, I'll try and explain it :smile:

The grade boundaries for raw marks is different every year. Raw marks are then converted into UMS marks. The conversion takes account of how well everyone did, most times the percentage mark in UMS is greater than the percentage mark in raw marks, i.e. scaled up. UMS marks never change, e.g. A = 80%, B = 70%, etc......

AS is out of 300 marks, so consequently there are 3 units. These 3 units must add up to 300UMS marks. Take for example, each unit of the 3 units is worth 100. In raw marks these papers may not neccessarily add up to 300 because not all exam papers can be designed perfectly to offer that, without some kind of compromise, i.e. longer papers would be needed.

Edit: lets say there was a very hard exam, highest percentage raw mark is 69%. This person who got 69% would possibly get 100% in terms of UMS marks. Otherwise there would be too many people failing....
Reply 9
i think i just have it all screwed up in my head and will never get it right! but it has to be fair so no point in me worrying! and won't matter after next thursday hopefully! only time will tell!
Reply 10
Intelligentsia
Well it's quite simple.

You get RAW marks on your paper. Say your paper is out of 75, 80% of 75 is 60/75 to get an A. But depending on how everyone else does, they might lower it so you need say 55/75 RAW MARKS (i.e. your actual marks) to get an A (80%).

What this now means is that 55 RAW MARKS are equal to 60 UMS. So the grade boundaries are fixed at 80,70,60% and so on for UMS, but the number of RAW MARKS that equals the UMS varies depending on how everyone performs. Hope that helps.


That is how I understand it to be .....

Josh
Reply 11
Okay, I'll try :smile:

UMS Boundaries remain fixed (A - 80%, B - 70%, etc.) and the raw marks required to get the above UMS Marks are adjusted in such a way that certain proportions of students get certain grades.

Your raw marks (actual number of marks obtain on that paper out of 60, 75, etc.) are scaled up/down so that a certain proportion of people get a certain grade.

Scaling up/down is done only if people (in general) find the paper harder or easier than normal (almost all grade boundaries are adjusted)

For example (I'll be using maths modules which are out of 75 simply becuase I have all the boundaries in a spreadsheet :p:. The UMS marks for these are out of 100)

M4 - Jun 03, people found much harder than usual and so 50/75 (67%) gave you 80 UMS - marks scaled up

FP3 - Jun 02, was an average paper so 60/75 (80%) gave you 80 UMS - no adjustment

FP2 - Jun 03, was easier than normal so 64/75 (85%) gave you 80 UMS - marks scaled down

Hope this makes it a bit more clear :smile:
Reply 12
^ That is very clear.

Thank you for breaking it down!

Josh!
Reply 13
jagdomar
^ That is very clear.

Thank you for breaking it down!

Josh!

You're welcome :biggrin:
Reply 14
dass06
i think i understand what you mean.. but not all papers are out of 100 so if u dont get bang on the grades was wondering how they work that out! must all be legit... just a bit confusing on students part!


Say I got 62/75 on a Maths paper. The exam board adjust what raw mark you need to achieve a UMS mark of 80 (for an A) depending on the difficulty of the paper. So last year, to get an A in a certain paper you only needed 52/75 and that converted to 80 UMS. The conversion is pretty complicated I think.

Don't quote me on any of this!
Reply 15
well UMS marks are according the normal distribution curve
they make it so every yr the top say 10% of people get As in the population. Therefore they scale 480/600 UMS marks (grade a) so that the top 10% of the results get the A grade ... so the UMS scale is scaled according to how hard the exam paper is

if the exam paper is hard, then the top 10% of the population may only get 76% or more in the exam. Thus 76% would equate to 480/600 UMS marks and everything will be scaled according to that.

UMS therefore shows really where u stand compared to all the people that took ur module/subject .....

does that make sense?