Glossary of student terms
43 academic terms, defined generically — no institution's rules smuggled in as fact.
Last updated: October 2026 · nuSkor is an independent student-built project — not affiliated with any university.
Academic vocabulary is full of words everyone uses and few define: sessional, weightage, rubric, curve. This glossary covers the terms you will meet in course outlines, marksheets and corridor conversations — written to be true at any university. Where a term involves rules that differ between institutions, the definition says so and points you to the only authority: your own course outline or handbook.
A
- Absolute grading
- Grading against fixed score boundaries (for example, 90+ is an A) rather than against classmates' performance. Compare with relative grading. Institutions differ in how strictly boundaries are applied.
- Assessment
- Any graded component of a course — quiz, assignment, sessional, midterm, final, project or viva. Each carries a weightage, and the weights define how much it matters.
- Assignment
- A piece of assessed work completed outside class, usually with a deadline. Its weight in the course total is defined by the course outline.
- Attendance policy
- A course or institution's rules about missed classes and any consequences. Policies differ widely, so the authoritative version is always your own course outline — never assume a general rule applies to you.
- Audit course
- A course taken for learning rather than a grade — attendance and participation without a grade point contribution. Whether audits appear on transcripts differs by institution.
C
- CGPA
- Cumulative Grade Point Average: the credit-weighted average of grade points across every counted course so far. It is total quality points divided by total credit hours, and it changes with every new semester.
- Class average
- The mean score of a class on an assessment or course. Useful context: the same raw mark reads very differently above or below the class average.
- Core course
- A course required by a program rather than chosen freely. Core status affects what you must take, not how the course's GPA maths works.
- Course outline
- The document defining a course's assessments, their weights, grading approach, schedule and policies. When any general guidance conflicts with your course outline, the outline wins.
- Course withdrawal
- Formally leaving a course before completion, with transcript effects that depend entirely on institutional rules and timing. Check your institution's process before assuming an outcome.
- Credit hour
- The unit measuring a course's size, roughly one hour of instruction per week over a term. Credit hours are GPA's weighting mechanism: a 4-credit course counts more than a 3-credit one.
- Cutoff
- The minimum percentage for a letter grade. Cutoffs differ between institutions and often between courses, so any table of cutoffs is only valid where it was issued.
E
- Elective
- A course chosen from a set of options rather than required. Electives count toward GPA exactly like core courses — their grade points carry the same weight per credit hour.
- Evaluation
- An assessed session — often a viva, demo or one-on-one marking meeting — where work is presented and questioned. Many courses schedule evaluations through booked time slots.
F
- Final exam
- The end-of-term assessment, usually carrying the largest single weight in a course. Its exact weight comes from the course outline, not from tradition.
G
- GPA
- Grade Point Average: the credit-weighted average of grade points for a defined set of courses. In common usage, GPA often refers to one semester (see SGPA) while CGPA refers to the cumulative record.
- Grade appeal
- A formal request to review a grade, following an institution's own process. nuSkor is not part of any appeal process — appeals go through your institution's procedures.
- Grade point
- The numeric value assigned to a letter grade on a university's scale (for example, A = 4.00 on a common 4.0 scale). Grade points are the raw material of every GPA calculation.
I
- Incomplete grade
- A temporary grade given when coursework is unfinished, converted later per institutional rules. The conversion timeline and consequences are defined by your institution, not by a general convention.
- Instructor
- The person responsible for a course — lectures, assessment design and final grade decisions. Teaching assistants usually operate under their direction.
L
- Leaderboard
- A ranking view of scores. A privacy-conscious leaderboard shows your position with anonymised neighbours rather than a public wall of names and marks.
M
- Marksheet
- A table of assessment results — what was graded, what it was worth, and what you earned. A digital marksheet can show running totals and class statistics; an official transcript it is not.
- Median
- The middle value when scores are ordered. Less sensitive to outliers than the average, which is why a class median can tell a more honest story than a mean pulled up by two perfect papers.
- Midterm
- A mid-semester assessment, typically carrying weight somewhere between quizzes and the final. Its exact share is set by the course outline.
O
- Office hours
- Scheduled times when course staff are available for questions. An underused resource — a five-minute clarification often beats an hour of guessing.
P
- Pass/fail course
- A course graded pass or fail without grade points, so it does not move a GPA (whether it affects credit totals depends on institutional rules).
- Percentage
- A score expressed out of 100. In weighted courses, percentages per component are combined by weightage to produce an overall course percentage.
- Prerequisite
- A requirement that must be completed before taking a course. Prerequisites are institutional rules — confirm them in the course catalogue, not by tradition.
Q
- Quality points
- Credit hours multiplied by grade points for a course. GPA and CGPA are simply total quality points divided by total credit hours.
- Quiz
- A short assessment, often frequent and low-weight. Individually they move little; collectively they quietly decide whether you sit comfortably inside a letter boundary or just outside it.
R
- Rank
- Your position relative to others, usually by weighted overall score. Rank is context for your own performance, not a judgement of it — class difficulty varies enormously.
- Relative grading (curve)
- Grading partly by position within the class rather than only by fixed boundaries. Curves are course-specific and often adjusted by instructors, so no general formula describes them.
- Repeated course
- Taking a course again after completing it once. Whether the old attempt stays in your CGPA, is replaced, or both count varies by institution — check your own rules before planning around a repeat.
- Rubric
- A breakdown of how marks are awarded for an assessment — criteria and their relative importance. Reading the rubric before starting work is the cheapest grade improvement available.
S
- Semester
- An academic term, typically 15–18 weeks, at the end of which grades are issued and SGPAs are computed.
- Sessional
- Ongoing in-semester assessment — frequently quizzes, assignments and classwork combined into one weighted component. Exact composition is set by the course outline.
- SGPA
- Semester Grade Point Average: the credit-weighted average of grade points for one semester. CGPA combines every semester's SGPA — but never as a plain average of the SGPAs themselves.
- Syllabus
- The content plan for a course — topics, readings and sequence. The syllabus tells you what will be studied; the course outline tells you how it will be graded.
T
- Teaching assistant (TA)
- A student or junior staff member who supports a course — running sections, grading, evaluations and student questions — under the instructor's direction.
- Transcript
- The official record of courses and grades issued by an institution. GPA math on any website is a convenience; the transcript is the record that exists.
V
- Viva
- An oral examination or defence of work, often part of an evaluation session. Preparation is mostly rehearsal: explaining your work aloud, then answering follow-up questions.
W
- Weightage
- The percentage of the final course grade that an assessment contributes. Weightage is the single most useful number on a course outline: it tells you where effort converts into grade.
- Weighted average
- An average where each value is multiplied by a weight before summing — the method behind course totals (weights = weightage) and GPAs (weights = credit hours).
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