The Top-Grade Hysteria: What Your School-Leaving Average Is Really Worth

How much have German school-leaving grades really improved?

According to data from the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education, the share of Abitur grades between 1.0 and 1.9 stood at 20.1 percent in 2006. By 2024 it was 30.7 percent. In 2021 and 2022 the share climbed to 33.6 and 34.2 percent respectively. The nationwide average, by contrast, barely moved.

One honest note on the sources belongs here. Alongside its detailed documentation „Abitur grades at Gymnasien“, the Standing Conference also publishes annual preliminary reports, most recently the preliminary report on Abitur grades for 2025. Provisional and final figures regularly differ slightly from one another. That is why we cite 2024 as the most recent reliable value and do not extrapolate a number that may still change.

For the top grade the trend is sharper. In 2006 fewer than one in a hundred Abitur candidates received a 1.0. In Berlin, the 1.0 was awarded roughly fourteen times as often in 2016 as ten years earlier. The nationwide Abitur average itself moved only from 2.52 in 2007 to 2.41 in 2017.

This creates a paradox. The more top grades there are, the less the top grade distinguishes between applicants, and the harder the fight for it becomes. The effort rises. The return per tenth of a grade point falls.

What do families in Germany spend on private tutoring?

According to a study by the Bertelsmann Stiftung, 14 percent of all pupils between the ages of 6 and 16 receive private tutoring, which amounts to around 1.2 million children. Parents pay an average of 87 euros a month for it. Extrapolated, that means roughly 879 million euros a year flowing into the tutoring market.

There is a second figure attached to that sum, and the two appear to contradict each other. An earlier calculation by the same foundation arrived at between 942 million and 1.468 billion euros, depending on the method. The difference lies in that method: the lower figure is based on a parent survey about amounts actually paid, the higher values on market estimates that also include informal and commercial offerings. Both calculations are sound. They measure different markets.

Tutoring is most widespread where grade pressure is highest. Almost one in five Gymnasium pupils uses it; in primary schools the figure is just under 5 percent. Mathematics is the most common subject at 61 percent of all tutored pupils, followed by foreign languages at 46 percent and German at 31 percent.

The most revealing number is in the detail. Roughly one in three pupils tutored in mathematics already has grades between 1 and 3. Tutoring is therefore often not a lifeline for weak pupils but an optimisation tool for strong ones.

What this means for a single family: our own calculation

We calculated this breakdown ourselves, based on the Bertelsmann average of 87 euros a month and the assumption of a constant price across twelve months a year.

The comparison that strikes us here: the roughly 3.130 Euro spent on tutoring in the final school years is almost two semesters’ tuition at a university in Europe with open admission, where semester fees start at 1.750 Euro. The same sum can therefore buy a tenth of a grade point or part-finance a year of study. This is not an argument against tutoring. It is a reminder that families should run the numbers on both routes. We do exactly that with you in the free consultation.

What does the school-leaving grade say about later career success?

The best-known meta-analysis on this comes from Roth, BeVier, Switzer and Schippmann and appeared in the Journal of Applied Psychology in 1996. It found an observed relationship between grades and later job performance of r equals 0.16, and around 0.30 after statistical correction. In 1998, Roth and Clarke found r equals 0.28 for grades and salary in the Journal of Vocational Behavior.

Translated, that means grades explain between roughly 3 and 9 percent of the differences in career success, depending on how you calculate it. The relationship exists and it is positive. Anyone claiming the opposite is just as wrong as someone who treats grades as everything. More than 90 percent of what separates people professionally, however, lies elsewhere. And one central finding of that same research is this: the predictive power declines the more years lie between graduation and working life.

The question is still an active research topic. In 2024 the Journal of Vocational Behavior published the paper „Does grade point average have a long-lasting impact on career success later in life?“, which follows the relationship from adolescence into mid-career. Anyone who believes the matter was settled long ago is behind the current state of the evidence.

Someone who optimises their entire adolescence for a tenth of a grade point is optimising a variable with single-digit explanatory power whose effect fades further with every year in the profession. That is not an argument against effort. It is an argument for distributing effort differently.

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What does grade pressure do to pupils?

The German School Barometer 2025/26, run by the Robert Bosch Stiftung and the University of Leipzig, surveyed 1.507 children and adolescents. Twenty-five percent report psychological difficulties, up from 21 percent the previous year. Twenty-six percent report a low quality of life, and 61 percent say a great deal is demanded of them at their school.

Forty-seven percent of respondents say they also have to study at weekends. These figures describe a burden, not a catastrophe, and they come from self-reporting rather than clinical diagnosis. That is exactly how they should be read.

The juxtaposition is what makes them interesting. On one side stands a variable that explains single-digit percentage points of later career success. On the other stands a substantial share of adolescence spent on that variable. Set the two side by side and the question of whether the input matches the return becomes almost unavoidable.

How many medical study places are allocated on the school-leaving average?

In Germany only 30 percent of medical study places are allocated through the top-grade quota. Sixty percent run through the universities’ own selection procedures, in which aptitude tests such as the TMS, vocational training and practical experience count alongside the grade. A further 10 percent fall to the additional aptitude quota, in which the Abitur grade plays no part at all.

For the 2025/26 winter semester, according to Hochschulstart, 31.543 applicants competed for 10.281 study places in human medicine. The cutoffs in the top-grade quota mostly lie between 1.0 and 1.2 depending on the federal state; Hochschulstart publishes them in a separate overview once the coordination phase has closed. So even in Germany’s most grade-fixated degree programme, the school-leaving average alone decides fewer than a third of the places.

How does admission to medical school elsewhere in Europe work?

Across large parts of Europe there is no numerus clausus for medicine and dentistry. Admission runs through an entrance examination in biology and chemistry or through a selection interview. Whoever knows the material gets the place, regardless of whether the transcript shows a 1.3 or a 2.8. There, the school-leaving grade is a formal criterion.

Degrees from these universities are automatically recognised within the European Union under Directive 2005/36/EC of 7 September 2005, because doctors, dentists, veterinarians and pharmacists are listed in Annex V of the directive with harmonised minimum training. Semester fees start at 1.750 Euro depending on the location. Medschool Experts has placed more than 500 students at over 25 universities along this route.

Studying abroad is therefore not a fallback but a full-value option with the same professional goal and the same recognition. Honesty requires the other side of it too: it costs tuition fees that do not exist in Germany, it means moving abroad, and at many locations it means an additional language as a graded compulsory subject. People who know that and still want it are usually in exactly the right place. Which location fits your profile and your budget is something we work out in a free consultation.

What does a grade say about a person?

A school-leaving grade describes how someone performed in a particular school system on particular days. It does not describe whether that person carries responsibility, whether they stay calm on a night shift, or whether patients trust them. It is precisely those qualities that decide things later in the profession.

I am not saying this from a distance. I did not study through the numerus clausus myself; I studied dentistry in Sofia from 2015 to 2021 and am today a Swiss-licensed dentist, running Medschool Experts from Bern. In practice, no one has ever asked me about my school-leaving average. What people ask about is something else: whether the treatment holds and whether they feel understood.

In consultations I regularly sit across from young people who carry their grade around like a verdict on themselves. That is the point where I push back most firmly. A grade is a measurement, not a verdict.

What should you build instead of optimising grades?

The conclusion to draw from these figures is not to ignore grades. A good average makes many things easier and opens the top-grade quota. The conclusion is to distribute the effort differently: towards experiences that count in selection procedures and remain valuable after graduation.

Someone who can do nothing but write good grades will be measured by their grades. Someone who brings genuine skills and experience eventually stops being asked about their transcript. That holds in vocational training, at university, and all the more afterwards.

Concretely, that means vocational training in a medical field, a voluntary service year, targeted TMS preparation or practical hospital experience improve the chances of a medical study place in many cases more than trying to squeeze the average down by another tenth. And they stay with you long after the numerus clausus has ceased to matter.