Stupid question, but... que? The best grade for my Sims is 5, not 4. Did you mean that it follows the same pattern but not exact numbers, or is my game really different from yours?

@gummilutt You're in Sweden, right? Do you play your game in Swedish rather than in English? Does your game's grading system seem to follow your country's grading system? I'm just wondering if there was some different programming by language.

I play an English game, and my sims can't get higher than a 4.0. The OP is in Portugal, playing in Portuguese, and their grades run differently, which is what started the original discussion.

I do have my game installed in Swedish, so that is probably it. Just seemed weird that they would bother changing that between nations.

When my parents were in school some 35-40 years ago the grading system was 1-5, but it's been a different system for as long as I've been old enough to know about it. If anything 1-4 matches that system better, since it had four possible grades.

I finished gymnasiet (rough equivalent of high school, for you non-Swedes) 20 years ago, and I had 1-5 as my grades all the way through. I think either my year or the one below was the last before the shift. So anyone who worked on the Swedish version of University when it came out would most likely have had those grades for most, if not all, of their schooling. (At least if we assume they weren't 19-20 years old at the time.)

One wonders when they are going to settle for a grade system and stick to it. If you were the last crop of the old system, that means the system I had only lasted... 17 years? since they changed it yet again a few years back.

Esme--tell me about it--I've got six, and so far I'm pretty sure they're all college bound. Two of them are talking about military academies so we'll see if they get the referrals and all. If they don't go, they'll likely be disowned by all the grandparents! (No, but they'd be the first kids to not go on my side of the family since as long as oral history stretches-so at least four generations, and the first on my husband's side to not go since college became available.) So we're talking up living at home and working your way through, because it's tough enough starting out without a ton of debt. (They're also likely to start college early, so living at home is a very good thing.)

Too bad it takes a ton of hacks for our sims to go to college from home. If they want feedback on how to do Sims 5 right, I'm sure all of us Sims 2 holdouts are available to give advice!

I think the "E for effort" is a mistake. I've read educational stuff going way back and the onky use I ever saw of that was as a joke in the 50s-70s.

That being said, my elementary school had a different system: E (excellent), G (good), S (satisfactory), N {needs to improve}, U (unsatisfactory).

My university had the grading scale A, B, C, D, E. They replaced the "F" with "E" because, they claimed, F was too associated with failure, and E didn't make students feel so badly about having, well, failed a course.

E for Effort was never part of the formal grading system. It's something individual teachers used to have room to do. Maybe some of them still do it on certain kinds of work, I don't know. You give a kid an F when he's been working his tail off, he thinks: "I'm dumb! I can't do it!" And he gives up.

But there's degrees of failure. In the 100-point system on which pre-university grades are rated, a score of 48 fails just as much as a score of 0 - but a kid who made a 0 last grading period and a 48 this grading period has made a significant improvement. (In a meaningful test; I for one could pull a minimum passing grade out of a true/false or most multiple choice tests on subjects I knew nothing about, for most of my school career.) So you put E on the report card or test paper, 48 into the grade average, and schedule a parent-teacher conference to work out how to turn that 48 into a 70.

It was a long time ago now and the memory of grades is hazy, but I'm pretty sure I got an E for Effort on in math at one point in first or second grade. I think it was on homework rather than in the report card, though. I've never actually flunked a subject, not even P.E., the other subject where I literally could not do some of the work.

I give Es ... and it's not for effort. But then I'm not an American.

Different versions of the game do have different scoring systems for school, but I've not tested for university.

esmeiolanthe, the UK system has changed somewhat in the 10 years since Sims 2 University came out as far is funding is concerned. When it came out, students were mostly paying £1200-£1300 per year tuition (this system began in 1998), £2000-£4000 accommodation per year plus £1500+ in other expenses. Students from outside the European Union could put a 0 on the end of their tuition fee because they weren't eligible for the "home" discount, and there were some grants around (I almost qualified for one based on locality but just missed on the basis of parental income). Parents were expected to contribute, but only if they were pretty rich or they were local enough to the university for commuting to be an option (it's much more common in the UK than the USA, if only because most towns are in commuting distance of multiple universities or degree-offering places).

I commuted to university from home under that system, and apart from the loan system which I wouldn't burden any of my Sims with, the adult university Sims 2 careers, in conjunction with visiting the occasional university/university-style community lot for student clubs, work well for me simulating that experience; (For the record, grade boundaries at my university varied slightly by department, which mattered if you took courses/modules from different departments like I did. The grades themselves were always First (set to about 70%)-Upper Second (about 60%)-Lower Second (around 50%)-Third (about 45%)-Pass without honours (which for some degrees, like mine, was treated as a fail)-Fail (this was always anything between 1% and 40%)-Ungradeable/Cheated (this was always 0%). Failing any component piece of coursework or exam led to instant failure of the course/module, though exams could be re-sat once without the original fail being entered into the permanent record for a fee. None of this passing courses without doing any term papers or final exams, as a couple of my Sims did some terms...

Two Fails or one Ungradeable/Cheated required a repeat of the entire year, minus any courses passed that the student considered to be an acceptable grade (none of this "academic probation for one term only"). This was avoided at all costs by students as this extra year was charged at the normal tuition fee, even then, and the loans system did not extend credit for that extra year if it had been caused purely by a student's inability/unwillingness to pass courses. Non-EU students wouldn't even be allowed to do that because for the most part their student visas didn't permit it... A record with too many "pass without honours" would not be allowed to graduate with honours, and for some degrees (like the one I was on) had specific extra requirements meaning certain courses/modules had to be at least a Third for the degree to be granted at all (professional accrediting organisers approving degrees - ubitiquous in medicine, law and teaching, but also affecting courses as diverse as information science and engineering - had the right to insist on this, plus the composition of courses leading to accreditation). The difficulty in getting particular grades varied by department from "somewhat tricky but perfectly reasonable for the committed student" to "happens once every three years in this department".

In 2006, new students had their fees raised to £3000 per year. In theory universities could charge less, but they mostly didn't. Accommodation also started creeping up because universities decided that students were going to approach degrees more as customers than formerly, and not tolerate shoddy accommodation - and passed the expenses in upgrading facilities to the students.

In 2012, the fees went up to £9000 per year (a few universities refused to raise prices all the way to that point... ...but not many). Student loans also got stricter, to the point where for some universities, the maximum loan and grant doesn't cover the cost of typical accommodation for the year (let alone tuition fees, which for most students starting after 1998, are supposed to be paid back after graduating, but sometimes get partly charged before term starts if parental income is high enough).

I don't think it would be possible to introduce effort grades for Sims. My local teachers can't tell the difference between perfect homework and an assignment that was deliberately burnt to cinders, how are they going to tell the difference between lazy Sims and hard-working ones?

The first thought I had reading your post was I'm sort of confused how you made it to your second year without knowing this haha
It's definitely a change from A-levels where you need 90% to get an A...you sort of have to have a different mindset with uni because 65% is definitely VERY good!

In particular, I study a humanities subject and there is no way you could feasibly get 90%+...I got 89 one time, but that was rare. In essay-based subjects it's just a whole different approach, because generally there is no right answer.

Personally I always found the university system in America very confusing.
Things like you can study for 2 years and then declare a major(?)) What do they study in those 2 years? random stuff? I don't get it :/

Your major is your specialty, but every degree is assumed to also require other kinds of knowledge to supplement it and provide context, such as the more practical sorts of math, modern languages, history, and so on. So all degrees require a certain number of hours outside your major, which may be differently distributed depending on whether you want a liberal arts, fine arts, or science degree - a science degree might have more stringent requirements in math than in modern languages. There are also electives - courses which can benefit anyone and everyone, but which are not considered absolutely necessary to all degrees. A future scientist who already had a good background in math might take extra modern language courses in order to be able to read foreign journals without waiting for translation, or be interested in taking drawing classes to improve her ability to make biological sketches.

Since many people start without a clear idea of what they want to do, they often take a broad spectrum of general courses that will apply to multiple areas on the first two years, and decide based on that work which field will suit them best. This enables them to focus more and take classes only in that subject in the last two years, having gotten all the general requirements out of the way already.

This is of course much simplified in the game, since sims only go to one class at a time, but is represented by the names and descriptions of the classes undeclared majors take in the first four semesters, such as "Writing More Goodly."

Here's a bit different. In the university I'm studying we have a 1 year initial course, that's about math, history, science and some stuff related to your career. This course varies from each career. Once you finished it you go straight to your specialization, mine is graphic design, so all my courses are about graphic design, later in the last year we have elective courses about other stuff that you can take or not like psycology, literature, but they're not mandatory. And if you feel like you don't like what you're studying you can change your orientation while in the initial course.
And the career lenght varies too, for example some engineering degrees are 6 year long


Personally I never liked playing university in the sims because it doesn't represent university life here

Nearly all British degrees require students to declare their "major" when they apply to university, so it did surprise me when I got Sims and discovered it was done differently there. I'm glad it does, though; a fair few Sims of mine have needed more than one attempt to find the right degree for them, and it would surely have been more if they were forced to decide when they were still teenagers and hadn't even necessarily settled on an aspiration yet!

I like the idea of a major system, that seems better to me. It's true in Britain you apply for the course before you even do your A Levels and you get an offer based on what grades you have to achieve (called a conditional offer) or occasionally if they really like you, you get an unconditional offer. Different courses have differing requirements. It is possible to switch course partway through but I think it usually requires repeating a year, which you can only do once before you lose funding.

I was surprised several years ago to realise the lack of an E grade in US schooling. In Britain it seems to go from A-G (with there being no real plus/minus grades, but something in the top percentage of A now gains you an A*) and the failing grade is U - unclassified.

To be fair, it's not declaring a major so much as applying for a specific degree course (i.e. you apply to do a maths degree or music or whatever). It's partly to do with how the courses are funded and you need to realise universities here aren't like schools. However, I think many students would benefit from a more general education in their first year of a degree and then specialise. The other thing to remember is that generally degree courses in Europe start at a higher level than elsewhere and in Britain in particular are very much shorter - not much time to mess about with general education. There are some places here talking of offering a two year degree ( ) - basically no long breaks. Personally, I think that would be horrible (and I'm thinking about it from the other side which is the presentation of the course). As British university lecturers are primarily employed on the basis of their research, it makes you wonder when they're supposed to do it (hint: the long summer 'holiday' isn't a holiday for most academics). I would guess what would happen would be that those degrees would have dedicated non-research teaching staff which might be a problem as this unfortunately over here would be regarded as second class.

I can't speak for the rest of the US (another way in which we are strange is that every state has its own way of doing things), but in California we have "general education" requirements which vary from campus to campus of the University of California and the California State University (two separate systems, and whenever try to guess the difference, you are told that no, whatever it is, that's not it: but the former is more expensive and prestigious). They get rather complex and demanding, with the result that there are majors where the students almost never graduate on time because they can't fit in all the coursework. Much of the gen eds are independent of your major, and most of them have lists of acceptable alternatives that can be used to satisfy them, and you're expected to get a large part of them out of the way before you get into the upper division courses of your major.