education courses were not given an R score. Before July 2017, the R score did not include the IDGZ and used the ISG: ISG = ( Average grade results of Secondary 4 and 5 of all the group's students - 75 ) / 14. Until July 2017, an additional score of 0.5 was added to the overall R score to a student graduating with an International Baccalaureate degree or a DEC (Diplôme d'études collégiales) en Sciences, Lettres et Arts. The adjustment of the Z score using the IDGZ has made that unnecessary. Criticism First-hand experience suggests that the R score is not as good an indicator as it was meant to be. A recurring complaint from students is that the ISG does not seem to be enough to offset the advantage enjoyed by students in weak groups. Such students have the opportunity to obtain grades much higher than the low average of their class, thus earning an elevated Z score, but students in strong groups cannot earn such high Z scores. One possible reason for this is that the ISG for a certain course is based on the average of the grades in all high school courses, which may not correlate to the group's strength in that course as much as the average of the grades of similar courses in high school. The perceived weaknesses of the R score are particularly worrying, because it is the main and sometimes the only criterion considered by Quebec universities during the admissions process. Since the R score is perceived as an absolute measure of a student's academic performance regardless of their academic rank, differences smaller than 0.5 are often used to discriminate between candidates applying to programs with fixed quotas such as medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, and law. External links The R Score: What It Is and What It Does R Score calculator Education in Quebec Student assessment and evaluation Statistics of education