{"id":6503,"date":"2013-11-18T06:30:36","date_gmt":"2013-11-18T06:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/?p=6503"},"modified":"2018-08-10T13:22:48","modified_gmt":"2018-08-10T13:22:48","slug":"new-swedish-grade-system-might-prevent-studies-in-the-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/new-swedish-grade-system-might-prevent-studies-in-the-us\/","title":{"rendered":"New Swedish grade system might prevent studies in the US"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sweden has recently, since fall of 2011 to be exact, introduced a new grade system to solve the problem of high grade inflation. In the old grade system grades in junior and senior high school consisted of a failing grade (Icke godk\u00e4nt, IG), acceptable\/OK (Godk\u00e4nt, G), very good (V\u00e4l godk\u00e4nt, VG) and the highest grade: very well done (Mycket v\u00e4l godk\u00e4nt, MVG).<\/p>\n

Just before the grade systems changed, the number of MVGs were extremely high and there was no certain way to make sure that all grades were equal. A MVG could be awarded to one student for half the work that a student in the other end of the country had to do. Even within schools different teachers could give \u201ceasy\u201d or \u201chard\u201d grades. This is of course still the same in the new system, but since the new system consists of a greater number of grades, from F to A (F being failing), the idea was that there would be less uncertain grades at least.<\/p>\n

The highest grade in the new system is at a far higher level than the highest in the old system. Many children who have experienced both systems have had to explain to their parents that a B in the new system, or even a C is close to a MVG in the old. In other words higher demands are being made of them for the highest grade. This isn\u2019t a bad thing per say, but since the system hasn\u2019t been in action for that long, neither teachers nor students are used to it. Many teachers are very uncertain about how to apply the grading criteria and the first years of students will probably feel the consequences of that.<\/p>\n

This spring the very first students of the new grade system are going to graduate. Recently an article in DN (Dagens Nyheter) described the total chaos some Swedish students are experiencing in the converting of the new grades to the American grade system. The American offices of evaluation of foreign grades and the conversion to American ones haven\u2019t received any information about the change of difficulty between the two Swedish systems. This has meant that there has been a straight conversion from the Swedish A to the American one, even though a B in the american system is worth a C\/D in the Swedish.<\/p>\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
American grades<\/strong><\/td>\nNew Swedish grade system<\/strong><\/td>\nPrevious Swedish grade system<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
A<\/strong><\/td>\nA,B<\/strong><\/td>\nMVG<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
B<\/strong><\/td>\nC,D<\/strong><\/td>\nVG<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
C<\/strong><\/td>\nE<\/strong><\/td>\nG<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
D,F<\/strong><\/td>\nF<\/strong><\/td>\nIG<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Both the American and Swedish grading system convert their grades to a number scale. Lack of communication and explanation has meant that many Swedish students from the new system who want to be exchange students, or apply to university in the States get very bad converted scores, even though they have high grades in Sweden. The conversion scale gives a student that has an average of Bs in Sweden under acceptance rates for most universities in the US.<\/p>\n

When the problem was voiced to the Swedish department of education they were completely unaware of the consequences the new grade system many students were about to face. They are now thinking about doing something about the problem they told DN’s reporter. Hopefully all this years graduating students will still be accepted to American universities even though there have been a lot of problems in the application process so far.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

Sweden has recently, since fall of 2011 to be exact, introduced a new grade system to solve the problem of high grade inflation. In the old grade system grades in junior and senior high school consisted of a failing grade (Icke godk\u00e4nt, IG), acceptable\/OK (Godk\u00e4nt, G), very good (V\u00e4l godk\u00e4nt, VG) and the highest grade…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":6505,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[34664],"class_list":["post-6503","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-grades"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6503"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8142,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6503\/revisions\/8142"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}