Course Grading
Course grading will proceed in compliance with University policy as given in Article 3, Part 1 of the Student Code.
General grading rules
We use a holistic grading scale for all graded work in which correctness is assessed (exams and mock oral exams), as follows:- 100% for demonstrating full understanding of a problem (up to trivial mistakes)
- 80% for demonstrating good understanding, but with non-trivial mistakes
- 60% for demonstrating decent understanding, but with with significant gaps
- 40% for demonstrating a clear lacking in understanding and unproductive approaches to problem solving
- 20% for showing little to no understanding and no path to solution of a problem
Homework
- Problem sets are posted by Wednesday.
- Deadline for submitting solutions on Gradescope is the end of the following Wednesday (11:59:59pm).
- Convert your homework into a good-quality and well-legible PDF and upload it there before the deadline (properly sorted by problem, please).
- Homework is graded for completion, not for correctness. You receive full credit for a complete and serious attempt at all problems. Solutions are posted so that you can check your own work.
- Late assignments will be marked down 20% for each 24-hour period beyond the due date, i.e., if your raw score is x, your score n days late would be (1 - 0.2 * n) * x; it does not matter, for example, if you're 1 minute late or 23 hours late -- both count as 1 day late.
- For poor submission quality (not legible, pages not sorted, poor writing quality, etc.), TAs may grade your submission as a 0 and/or request a re-submission.
- Grades and solutions are typically available one week after submission deadline. If you have a good reason to be excused from a homework assignment, see Attendance and Excused Absences for how to request an excused absence.
Discussion
- Discussion is graded by participation: you must attend in person and actively participate in solving the problems for full credit. This counts 5% of your final grade (2 lowest sessions dropped). If you cannot attend, see Attendance and Excused Absences for how to request an excused absence.
- Twice during the semester you will explain your work on a problem to your TA ("mock oral exam"). The TA will pick people to examine at random each session. Each of these counts 5% of your final grade. These are graded pass/fail, and you can re-do them if your TA is not yet satisfied with your explanation. There are no excused absences for the mock oral exams.
Computational exercises
- Three exercise sets will be released over the course of the semester; you will get four weeks to work on them. They count as regular homework sets.
- Submission is on Gradescope, as separate problem sets
- To submit, please convert your solved notebook, incl all relevant output, into a decent-looking PDF. See the bottom of the notebooks for help if you have trouble producing a good PDF file!
- As for the other homework sets, they are graded for completion: answer all questions, including the ones that ask for interpreting the physics!
- Note: for computational exercises there's often not one single way to do it right; also, the results should only confirm physics that you already know. For that reason we do not publish 'correct' solutions for the computational parts.
Final grade composition
Your final grade will be based upon the course components as follows:
| Course Component | Number of Assignments | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
|
Discussion sessions (participation: 2 lowest will be dropped) |
11 sessions (for participation; equally weighted): 5% 2 mock oral exams (equally weighted): 5% each |
15% |
|
Homework (3 lowest will be dropped) |
11 regular homework sets and 3 computational homework sets (equally weighted; graded for completion) | 10% |
| Midterm exams I and II | 2 (equally weighted): 20% each | 40% |
| Final Exam | 1 | 35% |
| 100% | ||
Final Letter grades
The UIUC-typical translation from percentage score to letter grade is as follows (the number given is the minimum score required for that grade):
A+: 98% · A: 92% · A-: 90% · B+: 88% · B: 82% · B-: 80% · C+: 78% · C: 72% · C-: 70% · D+: 68% · D: 62% · D-: 60% · F: less than 60%
Note: This is an anticipated translation; the actual translation may differ due to the grading curve (see below).
Grading philosophy
The exams determine most of your final grade, and it may be helpful to know what we expect for which grade. If you can consistently reproduce the assignments of the course (with minor variations) without major mistakes, then you are on track for up to a B+ or A-. To earn an A, we expect that you can transfer the thinking of the prior assignments to new problems that require the same tools.
Adjustment of the grading scheme ("Curving")
We do not curve individual assignments (such as exams). For each assignment, your percentage score is an honest reflection of your mastery of the material as tested.
However, if the median final grade of the class ends up below the B range, we may consider curving up by adjusting the grade boundaries given above. This will be decided after the final exam, and will respect our overall grading philosophy. In any case, your final grade will not be worsened by the curving.