Work out the score you need on your final exam to reach the grade you want.
Enter your current grade, target and exam weight.
How the final grade formula works
Your final grade is a weighted average: the work you have already done counts for one share, and the final exam counts for the rest. If the exam is worth 30% of the course, everything before it is worth 70%. Rearranging that gives the score you need: (target − current × (1 − weight)) ÷ weight.
If the number you need is above 100, the target is not reachable through the exam alone — check whether extra credit, a retake or a dropped-lowest-score rule applies. If it is very low, you have already banked the grade and can plan your revision time accordingly.
Before you sit the exam, your grade is already locked into a 30-point band
A final worth 30% cannot move your result by more than 30 points, whatever happens in the room. With 85% of coursework banked, every possible outcome lands between 59.5% and 89.5% — and knowing which end of that band you need is far more useful than knowing you should revise.
How it works
- Works out the exam score needed to reach a target overall grade.
- Shows the best and worst possible finishes, which the exam weight fixes before you start.
- Flags targets that are already unreachable, so effort goes somewhere it can still matter.
banked = current grade × (1 − exam weight) needed = (target − banked) ÷ exam weight lowest possible = banked highest possible = banked + exam weight × 100 above 100 the target is unreachable; below 0 it is already secured
Worked example
Coursework standing at 85%, with a final worth 30% of the module.
- banked = 85 × 0.70 = 59.5 points
- score 0 on the exam → 59.5% overall
- score 100 → 89.5% overall
- to finish on 80% you need 68.3%
- to finish on 90% you need 101.7% — impossible
The exam can only move you 30 points, and it is the coursework that decided where those 30 points sit. A 90% overall was gone before the paper was printed; an 80% needs a score comfortably below the coursework average.
Reading the result
- Check whether the exam is weighted or whether a pass on it is required outright. Many modules carry a separate hurdle — a minimum exam mark regardless of the weighted total — and the arithmetic here says nothing about that condition.
- The needed figure is often lower than people assume, and that is worth knowing early. Here a target of 70% needs only 35% on the final, which changes how the remaining revision time is best spent across several modules.
- When a target comes out above 100 it is not a signal to work harder on that module. It is a signal to protect the modules where marks are still movable, which is the opposite of where anxiety usually sends people.
- Rounding rules matter at the boundaries. A module landing on 69.6% may round to a different classification depending on the institution, so confirm whether the published grade is rounded, truncated, or neither before planning to the decimal.
Common questions
- What score do I need to pass?
- Subtract what you have already banked from the pass mark and divide by the exam weight. With 59.5 points banked and a 30% final, a 50% pass needs (50 − 59.5) ÷ 0.30, which is negative — the pass is already secured whatever happens.
- Why is my target impossible?
- Because the exam weight caps how far the result can move. A 30% final adds at most 30 points to the 59.5 already banked, so anything above 89.5% cannot be reached. The number 101.7% is the formula stating that plainly rather than failing quietly.