EdTalk | Time to take the guesswork out of grade estimates
- The anxiety-ridden practice of predicting future grades could be avoided if tertiary institutes could assess students’ applications after final results are in
If I was invited to make a list of the things I did not miss from my years in an international school here in Hong Kong, predicted grades would be at the very top of it.
Why? Predicted grades are those that teachers estimate a student is likely to achieve in an external examination – such as IB or A-levels – the actual results of which arrive in the mail nearly a year later. These grades are used by many universities to determine the eligibility or competitiveness of the applicant for their course or institution.
The United Kingdom is the most prescriptive country when it comes to predicted grades and each department of each university publishes its entrance requirements on ucas.com. If the course demands 7,6,6 at IB Higher level and the student is predicted 6,6,6, it is likely the student will not receive a conditional offer. In other words, they will be rejected. Not all countries are the same, though. Australia, for instance, can use the final results because of its different academic year.
It should be obvious how crucial these predictions can be and why this subject is so sensitive – to the extent that some well-known schools in Hong Kong will not release these divinations to students or parents, I suspect for fear of litigation.
Irrespective of disclosure, schools use different methods for generating these grades and do so at different times. Subject teachers are often required to make these predictions early in the first term of the senior year based on the student’s performance over the previous academic year, and the first few weeks of the senior year, if that is possible.
This is why I always advise students not to coast during their penultimate year of high school – their performance in that year is heavily reflected in their university applications, although some US colleges ask for a midyear update in the senior year.
Any prediction, almost by definition, involves an element of opinion and subjectivity in terms of the teacher’s perception of how the student will cope with an examination and level of study that is often more demanding in the senior year. Some schools hold internal tests or exams, the results of which will directly inform the predicted grades, to establish objectivity.