Grading Policies

Our goal in assigning a final grade for 6.200 is to balance learning opportunities with the need for assessment. Our strategy is to use the midterm exam and final exam as our primary assessment tools, while every other aspect of the class is intended primarily as a learning tool.

This page describes some of the details of how your grade in 6.200 will be determined.

Table of Contents

1) Policy on "Curving" Grades

We strive to assign grades according to MIT's definitions of what the various letter grades mean. Note that all of these definitions, and hence all of our grading policies, are based on your performance in the subject, not on how you compare against your classmates. We do not curve grades for any class component, nor for overall grades, based on aggregate statistics, and we do not have any limits on the number of students who can receive each letter grade; if we believe that everyone in the class has demonstrated an "A" level of understanding, then everyone in the class will receive an A!

2) Grading Scale

All assignments are graded in a two-stage process: first, each assignment is assigned some raw number of "points," and then these points are converted to a real number in the range [0, 10] representing a grade on a continuous scale depicted below:

Note that, while this scale looks similar to a typical 90-80-70-60 grading scale, your score on any assignment is not a raw percentage divided by 10; rather, the scaling is based on our assessment of performance according to MIT's letter-grade definitions. The fact that we grade based on MIT's definitions of letter grades, coupled with the fact that every assignment is different, also means that the transformation from raw points to this score will generally be different on a per-assignment basis (i.e., the "boundaries" above will generally be different for the midterm exam, the final exam, and the other components of the grade).

3) Overall Grade and Grade Components

Your final grade in 6.200 will be computed as a weighted average of the several components, according to one of the following two schemes (whichever is most beneficial to you):

• Option 1:

  • Problem Sets: 13%
  • Labs: 12%
  • Nanoquizzes: 5%
  • Midterm 1: 20%
  • Midterm 2: 20%
  • Final Exam: 30%

• Option 2:

  • Problem Sets: 13%
  • Labs: 12%
  • Nanoquizzes: 5%
  • Midterm 1: 18%
  • Midterm 2: 18%
  • Final Exam: 29%
  • Class Participation: 5%

where each component grade is expressed on a 10-point scale (as described above). The weighted average (a number between 0 and 10) will then be converted into a letter grade using the conversion described above. The result will be a number in the same range [0, 10], which we will convert back to a letter grade using roughly the same scale as above.

Additionally, in order to earn a passing grade for 6.200, you must earn a passing grade (D or higher) in each of the following grade components individually, regardless of your scores in the other components:

• problem sets
• labs
• exams (weighted average of midterm and final)

4) Lateness

We believe that it is important to work through the exercises even after the deadline, and so for many of the kinds of assignments in 6.200, work can be submitted after the nominal deadline for some amount of partial credit (though for some kind of assignments this is not logistically feasible). This section describes the lateness policies for the various kinds of work in 6.200.

• For free-response work ("problems" in the problem sets), we are unable to accept late work except for extenuating circumstances with support from a Dean in S³.

• For labs and auto-graded online exercises, any portion submitted on time will receive full credit, and any portion submitted late but within one week of the nominal deadline will receive 75% credit.

If you are experiencing serious personal or medical difficulties that prevent you from completing the work in 6.200 on time, please talk with a Dean at Student Support Services. With their support, we can consider additional extensions or alternative arrangements. Without written support from Student Support Services, we cannot consider any exceptions to the rules outlined on this page.

5) Collaboration Policies

We encourage students to discuss 6.200 concepts and approaches with other students and with the teaching staff to better understand these materials. However, it is important that these conversation be held at a high level, and work that you submit under your name -- including derivations, programs, plots, and explanations -- must be your own. When you submit an assignment under your name, you are certifying that the details are entirely your own work and that you played at least a substantial role in the conception stage.

Students should not take credit for work done by other students. Students should not use solutions of other students (from this semester or from previous semesters) in preparing their own solutions. And students should not share their work with other students, including through public repositories such as GitHub.

Copying work, or knowingly making work available for copying, in contravention of this policy may incur reduced grades, failing the course, and/or other disciplinary action.

Weekly homework assignments provide an opportunity to develop intuition for new concepts by actively applying the new concepts to solve problems and answer questions. The process of actively struggling with the use of new ideas until you understand them is an effective and rewarding form of education. Reading someone's solution to a problem is not educationally equivalent to generating your own solution. If you skip the process of personally struggling with new concepts by getting the answers from someone else, you will have lost an important learning opportunity.

Good problems are a valuable resource. Don't squander that resource.

These policies are in place with the primary goal of helping you learn more effectively. If you have any questions about why the policies are structured as they are, or if a certain type of collaboration is allowed, just ask! You can do so by sending e-mail to the instructors (6.200-instructors@mit.edu).

For more information, see the academic integrity handbook.