Nottingham Trent University
degree classification calculator

Class boundaries

What do I need for a First?

The planner under the calculator works backwards from Nottingham Trent’s own algorithm. Enter the marks you have so far, leave the years you have not finished empty (or set how many credits are still to come), and it shows the lowest mark you would need in every remaining module to reach each class. It runs the same calculation as the calculator, using the year weights and the secondary rules in the table above, so a class reached through one of those routes shows the lower figure.

The answer is a single mark repeated across every remaining module. Real marks vary, and where only some credits count or a class can be reached through a share of high marks, an uneven spread can sometimes get there with a slightly lower average. “Already secured” means the algorithm gives that class even at 0 in what is left, but you still have to pass those modules.

Grade points, not percentages, and there are seventeen of them

Appendix 1 of Section 16A sets the whole scale. It runs from Exceptional 1st at 16 down to Zero at 0, and each named grade owns a band half a point either side — Low 1st is grade point 13, and its band runs 12.5 to 13.4. That band edge, not the grade point, is what the classification thresholds are actually set at. Fails are graded too: marginal fail 3, mid fail 2, low fail 1. Nothing on your transcript is a percentage, and there is no NTU conversion from one to the other.

Your class is the better of two routes, and they are not two versions of the same sum

Appendix 2 is explicit that the award is decided by “either the weighted arithmetic mean of the contributing grade points or by the majority grade, whichever results in the higher outcome”. The mean route is the familiar one. The majority route asks a different question entirely: how many credits sit at a class or above. Reach more than half and you have that class, whatever the mean says. A student with 80 credits at Low 1st and 40 at Low 2.1 has a mean of 12.2 — an upper second — and a first class majority. NTU awards the First.

“More than half” means more than half, and the regulation does the arithmetic for you

This is the detail that decides real cases. Appendix 2 says the majority is more than half of the contributing credits, and gives its own worked figure: to reach a first class majority on a course where Level 5 counts, you need first class grades in more than 70 credits out of 140. Exactly half is not a majority. A student with precisely 60 of 120 Level 6 credits at first class grades does not have a first class majority — one more counting credit does it, and sixty does not.

Level 5 counts on some courses and not on others, and it counts twice over differently

Regulation 18.2: an honours classification rests either entirely on the Level 6 result or on Level 6 with a 20% contribution from Level 5, agreed when the course was approved. NTU publishes no list of which courses do what, so your course handbook is the only place to check. And here is the part almost nobody notices: where Level 5 does count, it is worth 20% of the mean but only 20 credits out of 140 in the majority test — 14.3%. The same Level 5 result is weighted two different ways depending on which route is being checked. That asymmetry is in the regulation, not an approximation here.

Everything is rounded to one decimal place, and the rounded number is what carries forward

Appendix 3 governs every aggregation on the way to your class. Element grades are averaged to a module grade, rounded to one decimal place; module grades are averaged to a level result, rounded again; and it is the rounded number, not the associated grade point, that enters the next stage. Halves round up: the regulation’s own examples are 8.44 becoming 8.4 (a mid 2:2) and 12.45 becoming 12.5, which is a first. Two-tenths of a mark on a single module can therefore travel all the way to your classification.

There is no borderline rule and no board discretion

Most universities on this site have a clause letting a Board of Examiners raise a student sitting just under a boundary. NTU has the opposite. Regulation 18.6 states that “award board discretion must not be used to alter the classification determined by the calculation”. The majority route is the secondary mechanism, and once both routes have been run the number is the answer. The single exception is 18.7, where a board may exercise discretion for a student with approved personal circumstances — a separate process under Section 17A, not a borderline zone.

A compensated module still carries its fail grade into the calculation

A marginal fail can be compensated so that the module counts as passed and its credits are attained (7.2), normally up to a maximum of 20 credits in one stage, and beyond that where a board is satisfied the course outcomes have been met. But 7.6 is blunt: once a grade has been compensated it must not be adjusted. The pass is recorded; the grade point is not raised. So a compensated module enters your mean at 3, or 2, and enters the majority test as credits sitting below every class. Reassessment is capped too — 12.1 holds a referred or repeated module at a Low 3rd unless you had already passed one of its elements at the first attempt.

Integrated master’s: why this calculator stops at the bachelor’s

For an integrated master’s the classification combines Level 6 and Level 7 credits at a weighting agreed at approval, and must include 120 credits of Level 7 (18.3). The majority test then runs over 240 credits at a 50:50 split, or 180 at a 20:30:50 split where the Level 5, Level 6 and Level 7 aggregates stand in for 20, 40 and 120 credits. The problem is the scale. Level 7 credits are graded on the postgraduate scheme (Section 16C, Appendix 1), where a marginal fail is worth 6 grade points against the undergraduate 3 — the same value as a High 3rd at Level 6. The passing grades line up; the failing ones do not. A single calculator mixing the two would be right for most students and quietly wrong for anyone carrying a Level 7 fail, so this page does not offer one. Your course team holds the approved weighting.

What this calculator does not do

It applies the published algorithm to the marks you enter. It cannot know your programme’s approved variances, any extenuating circumstances, capped resit marks, or how a Board of Examiners will use its discretion. Where a rule is a judgement rather than a formula, the page says so rather than guessing.

Sources

Every figure on this page is read from Nottingham Trent’s own regulations:

• Nottingham Trent University — Quality Handbook Part E, Section 16A: Common Assessment Regulations for Bachelor’s and Integrated Master’s Degrees, September 2025 — read in full: 5.3 to 5.6 how element grades aggregate to a module grade and the minimum pass; 7.2 to 7.6 compensation and the rule that a compensated grade is never adjusted; 12.1 the capping of reassessed modules at a Low 3rd; 16.1 the stage result; 18.2 whether Level 5 contributes and at what weight; 18.3 the integrated master’s combination; 18.4 the classifications and their minimum grades; 18.6 the prohibition on board discretion altering the calculation; Appendix 1 the 0–16 grade points and their bands; Appendix 2 the two routes, the majority grade and the ‘more than 70 credits’ worked example; Appendix 3 rounding to one decimal place and carrying the rounded number forward.
• Nottingham Trent University — Quality Handbook Part E, Section 16C: Common Assessment Regulations for Taught Postgraduate Degrees, September 2025 — Appendix 1 the postgraduate grade scheme, read for the Level 7 credits that contribute to an integrated master’s: the pass and classification grades coincide with the undergraduate points but the fail grades do not — marginal fail 6, mid fail 4, low fail 2. Appendix 2 confirms the same mean-or-majority pair applies to taught postgraduate awards.
• Nottingham Trent University — StudentHub, Degree classification — the student-facing summary of the same rules, giving the 9.5 threshold for an upper second in plain terms and confirming the 0–16 scale. Last updated May 2023 and written for earlier cohorts, so the Quality Handbook is the source for every figure on this page.

Regulations change between intakes. Your own cohort’s handbook is always authoritative.