Board Thread:Fun and Games/@comment-33134880-20170918022814/@comment-25856498-20180315141658

Difficulty does play a factor into determining how these grades are scaled, but only to some extent. For instance, say Business students took IG and a particularly hard paper came out that year. It's a little less of a surprise if people with 45+ out of 80 get A* in that year then. But another year the paper is easy, and so people with even 55 could not get A*

(I actually find it quite a challenge to score in Business. My personal best on a single paper is 71 out of 80, but that was a lucky break; I averaged 50+ otherwise)

On the other hand, some subjects like Add. Maths (and in A-Levels, Further Maths, which I take) may be considered by some to be some of the toughest papers ever offered amongst all subjects, yet the required raw marks to achieve A* is ridiculously high. Last year, you would need 97.5 out of 100 to get A* in Further Maths (though the proportion of people achieving this score is still actually decent).

In some subjects there are less percentage of people achieving A* compared to others. In my year where I took Business Studies only 2.7% achieved A* amongst everyone that took it. On the other hand, the ridiculous 97.5 Further Maths score was achieved by around 8% (IIRC). Some subjects get almost 0% A*