If it was that easy to get the number of scores required to get one’s bronze then I imagine more of us would have one. So perhaps earning a 67 is a big deal?
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But I bet the scores are stricter there too. I doubt if you took your USDF ammie PSG horse to a CDi that you’d get 70s.
In my college A is 85%, B is 75%, C is 65%. It’s kind of pointless because the grades are recorded as letters not percents. But a B is a perfectly good grade, Before grade inflation, C was considered a perfectly good grade.
As far as if scores of 67% were easy everyone would have bronze medals with distinction. Exactly. I suspect it’s the cutoff point for what you can do on a horse from a non dressage talented breed.
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Interesting. Where I teach A is 93-100, A- is 90-93
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We actually changed our percents to make them lower I think a few years ago.
Since I think in letters, mark in letters, and submit final grades in letter, the percent only comes into play for me because when I mark papers on our online app Blackboard I’m forced to submit a number percent to upload the marked paper. Sometimes A students ask anxiously what they can do to get the extra 15% 
and I tell them it doesn’t really work that way. I assume if the course was heavy on exams you just tweak the content of the exams to get the grade scores that are reasonable.
When I was a grad student at a very good research school, I once taught a summer condensed first year course that was a mix of enrolled students picking up a credit and 16 year olds on a kind of academic summer camp thing.
My first job after finishing grad school and ABD was in small regional college in the South. I quickly realized that there had been 16 year old high students at the AP summer camp who were already better writers, better read, and more worldly than any of our graduating seniors at the small college.
I thought I was being very careful to moderate my expectations at the small college and I was still completely frustrating and confusing those students by moving too fast and assuming skills and knowledge they didn’t have and didn’t even know existed.
So like with dressage scores, the context ends up shaping evaluation. You go from one a highly selective undergrad program to a local regional school where you just need high school graduation, it really changes where you start and where you can end up.
That’s why universities are ranked and people pay attention to that.
Same same for dressage scoring.
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My apologies. I was keying on this point from your initial post:
Only when you get to a score of “0” is the movement “not executed.” So we really don’t know what the judges would score, or differentiate “Fairly Bad” from a simple “Bad” to a really “Very Bad” piaffe, passage…etc.
And trying to provide a resouce (the FEI handbook) that I thought would help explain the differences between what would be scored 3 vs 2 vs 1, etc. Apparently I was not as helpful as I intended to be.
I certainly was not intending to imply anything about your familiarity or ability with the statiscs you are referencing - those are not my area of expertise.
If you audited the L, you only got to listen in to part 1. And, only information up to Second level. Id encourage you to scribe for a candidate in Part 2. You will hear instruction on real horses (not videos) and discussions of how the scores are calculated - including the lower ones,…
What I am trying to say is you have a taste of judges training but certainly nothing close to the whole thing. COnsider also that the judges’ eye is refined even further as they go through the “r”, “R”, and “S” training and exams.
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THose of us who argues against the “with distinction” category argued that most “normal” AAs on a “normal” horse rarely achieves 67’s. The developer of the award did all sorts of statistics… but…
I know that I worked REALLY HARD to get my Bronze and SIlver on a kind Lusitano (Didnt get the “Distinction” scores). COuld hte horse get those higher scores with another rider? Probably. But he would still have to work harder than is his "happy place… I know my flaws and work hard art overcoming them. Around here, among my AA friends, getting the Bronze or SIlver is a big deal and celebrated. By far most of us are not riding "70%) horses.
ANd to another point someone made upthread, the criteria for scores gets harder at each level… what would earn a 7 at First Level probably would not get that 7 at THird or FOurth… Expecting evidence of correct training - such as being over the back, more “through”, better reach in the lateral work, lowering haunches/more collection, etc…
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There is an FEI Judges Handbook…
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Yes, I’m aware - I own it, and linked to it above in case others find it interesting reading.
Thank you for the condescending tone. I was a 2nd level rider because that i what they needed. I have audited judge training up to GP. I have been asked to help out an “r” judge with her riding, I have been recommended by a rider of the Cadre Noir to help another instructor. So I feel I have that people with higher credential than any L-judge trainer respect my capabilities
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I think that’s my point. Someone even setting out to get their bronze and getting it is a thing to be congratulated. I’d hate if I got my Bronze and my friends knocked it because I “only” got a 67%
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I sure hope that no one thinks I was knocking getting a 67%. Quite the opposite. If I’m knocking anything, it’s that the “rulemakers” say that 67% is worthy of distinction (I agree), yet define 67% as less than good.
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Scoring gets lost a bit sometimes because judges of course are human and we all have the idea in our head of what a perfect w/t/c looks like.
Seen thru that lens it’s easy to understand why, depending on the judge, they want to judge that training level horse like it’s the holy grail of training level tests. However, it should be judged thru the lens of schooling show, local show, trying to qualify for something, nationals,CDI etc!
Example. I did my first two GP and entered a local show who also was hosting a qualifier. Unbeknownst to me (and my bad for not paying attention) they put me in that ring for my open class between the qualifying rides. (Weirdly I was the only one this happened to and my entry was correct and I did NoT enter that class. I was judged with no one else, my own class so to speak… again weird cause there was a normal open class running in another ring the same day as well as a TOC class) Did I get slammed… of course. That same test in a regular ring with only one judge would have scored higher. But I had two judges and their lens was is this ride good for qualifying for Lamplight. Not surprisingly my first ever GP on a green GP horse was not up to that lens.
Note to self and warning for all! Don’t EVER let that happen to yourself or a client 
lesson very well learned tho…
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then I apologize. You had only mentioned that you audited the L, and rode a 2nd level demo. I still think, however, that you do not have a good grasp of the complexity of arriving at a score for a movement.
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Apology accepted. What we are seeing in this thread is a reflection of the discussion going on in the “greater sphere” of dressage.
Riders with more credentials than me…and probably more credentials than most US dressage judges have an on-going discussion that continues to today.
Here is Allege-Ideal …(sorry it is in French) an organization that was founded to promote the French riding tradition
http://www.allege-ideal.com/
The 3 founders of this organization were colonel Christian Carde, Jean d’Orgeix and Michel Henriquet,
Col. Carde, FEI judge wrote a “Letter to a Befriended Judge” discussing the current state of competition.
Here is a 2009 COTH article discussing more of the controversy
And another 2006 COTH article on this conversation
Michel Henriquet was the trainer of his wife, Catherine Durand, a wining GP dressage rider. Here is a 2014 Dressage Today article on riding in lightness. Here is another article where Henriquet discusses lightness and traditional riding.
Jean d’Orgeix was the trainer of the French jumping team for the Montreal Olympics. Sorry, I can’t find much in English.
So, let’s agree that we things differently.
Just be aware that there are people with more credentials than most on this board who continue with this discussion…and there is probably no absolute answer.
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Um, not that meaningful. I have seen the same person ride a flawless test on a sort of 5 moving cutting bred quarter horse and a 8.5 moving warmblood. She gets 63 on the quarter horse at second level–but one of the most harmonious and beautifully ridden tests I’ve seen and maximized every single score that was not tied to the gaits. She gets a 74 at PSG on the warmblood, also beautifully ridden, but with a few mistakes. The 67 “with distinction” medals are not meant for the people riding the cutting bred cowhorse. They could never achieve it. They are also not meant to reward riding merit. Because of that, I say raise those “with distinction” medal score to what truly would be a challenge for an 8 or 9 moving warmblood…
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back in the days of when we had our four kids competing at Class As we had kept a log as to just what each judge’s preference was. We were scoring the judges.
Some did not like our style of horses (Lippitt Morgans) so that was noted. There were some shows we wanted to attend but did not since we already knew that our horses would not place.
Our horses knew they were good and became dejected when not awarded a placing
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How on earth does a dressage horse know whether it got a ribbon or not?
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horse’s first Dressage in an open Class A competition to become qualified for Morgan Nationals
however I was referring to Judging in general as all is their opinion based upon what they interrupt the rules to be, we found some had greatly differing beliefs
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This makes me giggle because I always have to do the ribbon photo thing with one my mares so she knows how good she is. Even if we don’t ribbon at an event I grab and old one and pose her with it and I swear she just beams with pride. I swear she knows!
Maybe she knows maybe she doesn’t, but it’s cute to think she does.
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