While in the minority, some schools do hand out E letter grades, but the majority of schools
in the United States, particularly beyond primary age, give grades of A, B, C, D, and
F. So where’d the E go?
Rather than a failure on the part of academic institutions to know the alphabet, the simple
answer is that “F” stands for “fail.”
The other four grades are more or less considered “passing” (though in some districts a
D is also a failing grade), which is why they go in alphabetical order.
The F is considered separate as it denotes a failing grade, and does not need to go in
alphabetical order.
It just so happens that “fail” starts with a letter that skips one letter alphabetically
on the scale.
That said, E was used at one point.
The first college in the United States to use a grading scale similar to the one we
know today was Mount Holyoke College, an all-women’s university in Massachusetts.
Before that, Yale used a ranking system in 1785 where “optimi” was the highest mark,
followed by second optimi, inferiore (“lower”), and pejores (“worse”).
William and Mary ranked students by number, where No. 1 was the first in their class and
No. 2 students were “orderly, correct and attentive.”
For a while, Harvard had a numerical grading system where students were graded on a scale
from 1-200 (except for math and philosophy classes, which were 1-100).
Yale had a four-point scale in 1813, switched to a nine-point scale somewhere down the track,
and back to a four-point scale in 1832.
In 1883, there’s a single reference to a student earning a “B” at Harvard, but
historians haven’t found additional documentation to back up the idea that a letter grade system
was actually in place at that point.
It is known that just a few years later, Harvard had a system of Classes in place—students
were either Class I, II, III, IV, or V, with V being failing.
That brings us back to the 1887 Mount Holyoke system, which looked something like this:
• A: excellent, 95-100% • B: good, 85-94%
• C: fair, 76-84% • D:
barely passed, 75% • E: failed, below 75%
A year later, Mount Holyoke modified their grading scale.
“B” became anything from 90-94%, “C” was 85-89%, “D” was 80-84%, and “E”
was 75-79%.
Below that, they added in the dreaded “F.” In the following years, some version of this
letter grading scale became popular across colleges and high schools alike, particularly
as the number of students per teacher skyrocketed not long after this time, requiring a simplified
mechanism for assessing students to save time and effort.
As this happened, a lot of schools skipped E and went straight to F for “Fail”
That said, after World War II, some schools—many in the Midwest—decided to go back to E for
fail to keep things alphabetical, getting rid of F.
It's further noted that some schools use “U” for “unsatisfactory” or N for “no credit”
in place of E or F. Of course, in more modern times, the grading
scale itself has been marked with an F (or E, or U, or N) by many who believe it is no
longer a good way to judge students’ work.
For one thing, there are variations across institutions.
Some schools use + and -; some don’t.
Some say an A is 90% and up, or 93% and up, or 95% and up.
Some consider a D to be a failing grade rather than a passing one.
On top of all of that, there are sometimes major variations in terms of what it takes
to get an A under one teacher vs an A from another, even in the same school.
Yet both are weighted equally when, for example, applying for college.
In the extreme, the co-author of this script once had a computer science professor whose
classes typically saw students awarded A's for as low as 10%.
Although it should be noted that while you might think this must have been a rather generous
professor, the opposite was the case, with anyone getting greater than a 10% in one of
this professor's classes needing to be an absolute god among mere mortals.
But, in the end, while not a perfect system, letter grades are a rather convenient way
to generalize where a particular student is at academically in a given class and, let's
face it, after college, nobody cares what your grades were anyway.
What matters is just your grades looking good enough to get into said college.
Speaking of looking good, Mack Weldon!!!
Bonus Facts: Ever wonder how the whole “Freshman, Sophomore,
Junior, and Senior” thing came to be?
Well, wonder no more: It turns out the origins of this date back several centuries to Cambridge
where in 1688 it was noted that “The several degrees of persons in the University Colledges
. . . Fresh Men, Sophy Moores, Junior Soph, or Sophester.
And lastly Senior Soph.”
That said, the origins of these individual terms go back even farther, variously used
seperately before this.
To begin with, a child of Modern English, "freshman" dates back to the mid-16th century
where it has invariably meant either "newcomer" or "novice."
Its use to denote a "university student in first year," also dates to the 1590s.
As for sophomore, this is likely derived from folk use of two Greek terms, sophos, meaning
"wise," and moros, meaning "foolish, dull," thus very aptly meaning a wise moron!
Dating back to the 1650s, by
the 1680s, the term was used to designate university students in their second year of
study.
Moving on to Junior, this dates back to the end of the 13th century, with junior always
meaning in English someone younger, or more particularly, "the younger of two."
Defined in relations to their more learned and wise upperclassmen, early on, juniors
were called "Junior Soph," or “Sophester” (ie Junior Wise) and seniors were denoted
with "Sophester" (wise) or “Senior Soph” (Senior Wise).
Finally, since the mid-14th century, senior has been used in English to denote either
an older person or one of authority.
Derived from the Latin adjective of the same word (meaning older), by the early 17th century,
it was being used to describe an "advanced student," and since 1741, without any “soph”
attached it has meant a "fourth year student."
Next up, ever wonder why #2 pencils used to be required for scantron test forms?
Well, wonder no more: To begin with, you might be saying, "Used
to?
Don't you still have to?"
It turns out, despite what pretty much all teachers will tell you, not really.
Modern scantron systems are quite high-tech, using image sensors and sophisticated image
processing algorithms.
These algorithms can even pick out which oval has the strongest mark.
So if your test is being processed by one of these newer scantron systems, you could
fill out every bubble on the scantron and it would simply pick the darkest shaded bubble
in each row and assign that as your answer.
As such, you can use pens, pencils, and even printer toner or ink, if you want to run your
scantron through a printer to mark all your answers.
Pencils are obviously still preferred over pens, giving you the ability to erase your
answer.
Also, generally speaking, you still want to use some form of grey to black colored marking
device to ensure your scantron form is read perfectly.
Although, anecdotal evidence has shown that even using shades of different colored ink
or colored pencils will also work.
Though, at that point, the system isn't necessarily going to read your form perfectly.
Further, if you pick a shade that is close to the color of the lines on the form, it
might just ignore your markings altogether.
On the flip-side, the early models of scantron machines were significantly less sophisticated.
The earliest of these scantron-like machines used electrical conductivity, rather than
light, to read forms.
Graphite is quite conductive and paper is not, so the machines simply had a mechanism
at each markable area location to make contact with the form and detect if an electrical
current was detected across the area.
These systems were used as early as the 1930s.
As for the next generation of these systems, they read pencil marks by shining light through
the paper and Lucite light guides, which was then read through phototubes.
With this antiquated system, for an answer to be read, the light must be completely blocked
out by the pencil marking to register correctly.
Graphite works well for this purpose because graphite molecules, which form tiny sheets
of carbon, reflect much of the light that hits them and absorb most all the rest.
It turns out, black ink isn't opaque enough for these old scantron systems.
Further, lighter shades of graphite, such as in #3 and #4 pencils, weren't sufficiently
opaque enough for these old systems to perform without error, as is generally required.
#1 pencils would have worked fine, as they are darker than #2 pencils.
But, unfortunately, they also smudge easier when erased or accidentally rubbed with your
hand as you mark the scantron form, increasing the possibility of a "false positive" when
the scantron was reading your form.
So #2 pencils were just the right mix of darkness and hardness of the graphite/clay core to
block the light effectively, while also not smudging too much.
One of the ways you can tell instantly whether whoever is processing your scantron is using
a modern system or not is if the scantron is double-sided.
If so, it cannot be using an antiquated model, as the marks on the other side would interfere
with the older system's ability to correctly read the scantron form.
Modern systems have no such problem.
On a related note, scantron forms used blue ink for the lines and outlines to the circles
because these old systems were designed not to pick up the light in the blue spectrum.
Newer systems are simply designed to ignore whatever color the scantron form was printed
in and generally self calibrate.