Score A — Help

What it does

Score A answers one question: what do I need to score on everything I have left?

You tell it how your course is graded — the categories and what each is worth — and you log each score as you get it back. From then on it tells you the grade you need on every remaining assignment to pass, to hold the letter you're on, or to hit the grade you're aiming for. It does the same for your whole term, weighted by credits.

It works for high school and for university, for one course or for seven. Nothing you enter leaves your browser except the syllabus text you choose to have read.

The three screens

The buttons at the top switch between them. Each answers a different question, so you never scroll around looking for something — you press the question you have.

Score A opens on whichever screen you were last using, on that device.

How courses appear, and how you move between them

Under Courses there's a row of tabs, one per course — press a tab to open that course. + Add course sits at the end of that row, and loading another syllabus adds a course too. With one exception: your first real syllabus replaces the sample term, so ending up with a single course after that first load is normal, not a bug. Every syllabus after that is added to what you have.

A new course then shows up everywhere on its own. Nothing to enable and nothing to sync — the moment it exists it has a tab, a bar under Term, and its dated assignments sitting on the Calendar among everything else.

Each course has a colour

Every course gets its own colour and a short code taken from its name — CALC for AP Calculus AB, CHEM for Chemistry. Both stay with that course everywhere it appears, and neither changes when you add or delete other courses.

Three things tell you whose colour is whose:

• The tabs under Courses — the coloured square sits right before the course name. This is where you learn the colour without being told.
• The legend above the calendar — every course with its colour and its code. Press one to show only that course's dates; press it again to bring them all back.
• The code on every entry — which is what keeps the calendar readable in black and white, on a washed-out screen, or if you don't see colours the way the palette assumes. The colour makes it fast; the code makes it certain.

Under Term the two are kept apart on purpose: the little square beside each course name is the course's own colour, while the bar itself is coloured by how that course is going — green, amber or red. One says who, the other says how.

Quick start

1. Load one course. Find the grading section of your syllabus, copy it, paste it into the box at the top, and press Read the syllabus. Check the preview, then press Create the course.
2. Type in the scores you already have. Each category holds its own assignments. Leave the ones you haven't taken blank — blank is what makes the math work.
3. Read the big number. That's what you need on each assignment still open.
4. Add your other courses with + Add course at the end of the tab row, or by loading another syllabus.
5. Press Term and Calendar at the top. Term is everything at once, weighted by credits. Calendar is everything with a due date, nearest first.

Five courses take about ten minutes once, and after that it's ten seconds every time a grade comes back.

Loading a syllabus

There are two ways in, and one of them is much better.

Pasting text — the reliable one

Open your syllabus, find the part that explains grading, select it, copy it, and paste it in. You don't need the whole document. What matters is the part that says what each piece is worth, for example:

If the grading rules are spread over a table and a footnote, include both. Extra text doesn't hurt — missing text does.

Dropping the file in

One course at a time. If you drop five syllabi together only the first is taken, and you'll be told so. That's on purpose: every read comes back as a preview for you to check, and that's the step that catches a weight read wrong. Five courses take about three minutes, once a term.

Drag the syllabus onto the drop zone, or press Choose file. Three kinds of file work:

• PDF — the whole document, whatever its size. You don't need to find the grading section yourself; it gets located inside the file. The PDF is opened right here in your browser: if it has text, only the text is sent; if it's a scan, its pages are turned into pictures here and those are sent. Either way the file itself never leaves your computer, and there's nothing to shrink or screenshot first.
• A screenshot or photo — of the grading table, or of the board. Make sure it's in focus and the small print is readable.
• A .txt or .md file — loaded straight into the box for you.

Checking the preview — don't skip this

Before anything is created you get a preview of what was understood: the course name, the credits, each category with its weight, how many assignments it holds, and whether any lowest scores get dropped.

Read it. Anything wrong here flows into every number the app shows you afterward. Two things to look at first:

• Does it add up to 100%? There's a badge that tells you. If it doesn't, something was missed — a whole category, usually.
• Are the assignment counts right? If your syllabus says four quizzes and the preview shows one, the drop-lowest rule and the per-assignment math will both be off.

If the weights don't add up, you'll also be offered a Read it again, more carefully button. That re-reads the same text with a slower, more thorough setting. Use it once; if the second try is still wrong, create the course anyway and fix it by hand — it's faster.

Warnings

Sometimes the preview shows amber notes. Those are rules that were found in your syllabus but can't be represented in the app — things like "you must score at least 60% on the final exam to pass the course" or an attendance requirement. The app does not apply those rules. They're shown so you know they exist and can keep them in mind yourself.

Setting up by hand

Set it up by hand creates a course with a common structure already in place — homework, quizzes, tests, final exam — that you rename and reweight. Often it's quicker than hunting for the syllabus, especially for a course you already know by heart.

You can also build one from nothing: add a course, then + Add category for each piece, set the weight, and + score for each assignment inside it.

Logging grades

A course is made of categories, and each category holds its own assignments.

The category is what carries the weight — "Quizzes, 20%". The assignments inside it are what you actually take — Quiz 1, Quiz 2, and so on. A category's grade is the average of its assignments, and the categories combine according to their weights.

A category can hold a single assignment. "Final Exam, 25%" is just a category with one thing in it.

Entering a score

Type it in the box next to the assignment. It turns blue to show it's a real, recorded score. Leave anything you haven't taken blank — that's how the app knows what's still open. Clearing a box turns that assignment back into an open one.

Dropping the lowest

If your syllabus drops the lowest quiz, set that on the category: the dropdown next to the weight offers drop lowest, drop 2 lowest, and so on. The app handles this properly, including while some of those assignments are still open — which is exactly the case where doing it in your head goes wrong.

Adding and removing

+ score adds an assignment to a category — useful when a professor announces an extra quiz. The × removes one. Removing a category removes its assignments with it.

The big number

The large figure on the right is what you need on each assignment you still have open, in order to pass.

"Each" is meant literally: if it says 84 and you have three things left, it's assuming 84 on all three. Score higher on one and you need less on the others — the number updates as soon as you enter a real grade.

Above it you'll see one of five states:

The details underneath

Those last two are the honest bounds on your course. Whatever happens, you finish somewhere between them.

Scenarios

Three targets, side by side. Each shows what you'd need on every assignment still open.

Any of them can also read Locked in (already yours) or Out of reach (no longer possible), with your ceiling shown underneath.

What if…

Every assignment you haven't taken gets a slider. Drag it to a score you think you'll get and press lock.

A locked guess is treated as done: it stops being something you need a grade on, and the big number recalculates over whatever is still open. That's what makes this useful rather than decorative — it answers "if I get an 80 on the midterm, what do I need on the final?"

Locked guesses show as dashed amber boxes so you never confuse them with real scores. Press release to unlock one, or Release all to clear them. When the real grade arrives, type it into the score box and the guess disappears on its own.

The whole term

The Term screen: every course at once, averaged and weighted by credits. One bar per course, with its own colour square beside the name; click any bar to open that course.

Set each course's credits in its Credits box, under Courses. Half credits are fine — type 0.5. If all your courses carry the same weight, leave them all at 1.

The three projection modes

Anything without a score and without a locked guess has to be assumed. The three buttons choose the assumption:

The bars show each course against the passing line, with tick marks at the letter cutoffs. Click any bar to jump to that course. The badges tell you how many credits are at risk — on track to finish below passing — and how many are already lost.

Dates and the calendar

Every assignment has a date box next to its score, under Courses. Fill it in and the assignment appears on the Calendar screen — a month grid, and the list of what's coming underneath. Every course is on it at once, which is the point: the week of the 14th isn't "Calculus week," it's two quizzes, a paper and a midterm from three different courses.

Each entry carries its course's colour and code, and the legend above the grid lets you press a course to see only its dates.

When you load a syllabus that includes the course schedule, the dates get picked up for you. Only real dates are taken: "Week 5" or "TBD" is left blank on purpose, because a wrong date on your calendar is worse than no date at all. The preview tells you how many were found.

What the list tells you that a normal calendar can't

Each line carries three things beyond the date:

• What it's worth — this one quiz is 5% of your course grade, that final is 30%. It's the fastest way to see which week actually matters.
• What you need on it, measured against your target, not just passing. "Need 93.2 for A−" is the number worth studying to.
• Whether that means lifting or holding. Amber means the score you need is above what you've been averaging in that course — you have to raise your game. Green means you just have to keep doing what you're doing.

If your target has slipped out of reach in a course, the line switches to what you need to pass instead. That's the honest question at that point.

Anything dated in the past that still has no score stays at the top of the list, marked overdue, and its date box turns red. It's the one thing you don't want to miss.

Putting it in your real calendar

Two ways, depending on whether you want one date or all of them.

• One at a time — + Google. Every line in the list has this button. It opens Google Calendar in a new tab with the event already written — title, date, what it's worth and the score you need. You just press Save. Nothing to set up, nothing to connect.
• All at once — Add to your calendar. Downloads a .ics file with every dated assignment. Open it and your calendar app — Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook — offers to import the lot.

Either way, each entry carries the course, the weight and the score you need, so the information travels with the date instead of being left behind here.

Settings

Three controls in the header, and they apply to your whole term.

Copy summary at the bottom puts a plain-text rundown of your whole term on the clipboard — handy for pasting into a message or an email to an advisor.

Your account

Score A opens on a sign-in page. Everyone has their own account, and your courses and grades are saved to it — so the same term is there on your phone and on your laptop, and clearing your browser doesn't take it with it.

Signing up

1. On the sign-in page, press Create an account.
2. Enter your email and a password of at least 8 characters.
3. Check your email and confirm. Until you do, the account exists but you can't sign in — this is the step people miss. Look in spam.
4. Come back and sign in.

If you'd already entered courses in this browser before signing up, they're moved into your new account automatically. Nothing is lost and nothing has to be retyped.

A new account starts empty — one blank course, waiting for your first syllabus. If you want to look around before entering anything real, Load an example term fills it with a sample you can clear afterwards.

Handing courses to someone else

Two people can't share an account, and nobody can reach into anyone else's. Courses move between accounts as a file instead:

1. Whoever has the courses presses Share courses… next to the course tabs, ticks the ones to send, and downloads the file.
2. They send it however they like — mail, chat, a USB stick.
3. The other person presses Add from a file and picks it.

The courses are added, not swapped in. Whatever was already in that account stays exactly as it was.

This is also the quickest way to set up a classmate: one person reads the syllabus once, and everyone else in the section gets the structure without retyping it.

What the message at the bottom means

Two devices at once

If you leave Score A open on your laptop and then enter a grade on your phone, the laptop is now looking at an old copy. When the laptop tries to save, Score A stops and tells you instead of overwriting what the phone sent.

The fix is to reload the page on the device that got the message. Its screen was out of date; reloading brings down what the other device saved. Anything you typed on the stale device after it fell behind won't be there — so when you see that message, reload before typing more.

Forgot your password

Forgot my password, on the sign-in page. You'll get an email with a link to set a new one. Nobody can look your password up for you — not even whoever runs Score A. That's on purpose.

Signing out

Press Sign out at the top, next to Help. Your term stays untouched in your account and nothing of yours is left behind on that device — signing back in brings it straight back. Worth doing on a shared or school computer.

Where your data lives

Your courses and grades are kept in your account, and also in the browser you typed them into. The browser copy is written first, every time, so a network that drops out never costs you work — it catches up on the next change.

• Every device you sign in from shows the same term.
• Clearing your browser no longer loses anything — signing back in brings it down again.
• Still nobody else can see it — not your school, not your parents, not whoever administers Score A. The database only hands your rows to you.

The backup file

At the bottom of the page, Save a backup file downloads your whole term — courses, grades, dates, settings — as a single file, and Restore from a backup loads it into any browser. Use it to move everything to another device without an account, or just to keep a copy somewhere safe.

Restoring replaces what's currently in that browser. Score A tells you how many courses the file holds and when it was saved, and asks before doing it.

The one thing that leaves your browser regardless is the syllabus text, PDF or image you choose to have read, which is sent to be turned into a course structure. Your grades are never sent to be read by anything.

If it looks wrong

How the math works

Worth knowing, because it's the reason you can trust the number.

Each category averages its own assignments, dropping the lowest ones when that's the rule. The categories then combine according to their weights. That gives your course grade.

To find what you need, the app searches instead of solving: it asks what the lowest score is that, repeated on everything still open, lands you exactly on target. That sounds roundabout, but it's the reason the answer stays correct when your syllabus drops your lowest quiz — because raising the score you assume can change which quiz gets dropped, and a plain formula silently gets that wrong.

Rounding goes in your favour, not the app's. The score you need is always rounded up and your ceiling is always rounded down. If you truly need 87.25, you'll be told 87.3 — because 87.2 wouldn't have been enough.

One more thing: reading your syllabus is the only part that uses AI, and it never touches the arithmetic. All it does is turn your document into a list of categories and weights, which you then confirm. Every number after that is computed in your browser, the same way every time.