Serbia inherited the academic grading system of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
The student's overall achievement is assessed by averaging his grades in all subjects and then applying the above ranges.
At universities, a six-point grading scale is used: Requirements for "a minimum achieved percentage at all stages of exam taking (written, practical, oral) in order to achieve corresponding grade" is regulated by the statute of each individual institution, but general rules apply: A student's average for all subjects is calculated to two decimal places (e.g. 9.54).
In practice, the mark of 10 is seldom given as it implies the perfection, which hardly ever characterizes a student's or indeed a lecturer's work.
Depending on the grade, universities can grant some honors (although this system is very limited compared to some other countries).
As the incidence of a 9 or 10 in Serbian university examinations are considerably lower than that of the top marks in the American or British grading system, it would be a mistake to equate a 10 to an A, a 9 to a B, and so forth.
Not surprisingly, Serbian graduates from US universities (even from the best ones) are not given equivalence automatically, but rather are put in 3rd, 4th or 5th years of diploma studies.
Recent examples include graduates from University of California at Berkeley and MIT who were given 8 differential subjects to study at the Faculty of Mathematics, and too many subjects to even get enrolled to final year at the Faculty of Physics so the graduate was enrolled in 3rd year of undergraduate studies of General (not even Theoretical, Experimental, or Applied) physics.
Such decisions are to be made by the commissions of faculties in question, and approved or disapproved by the Professors Assembly and, after that, by the dean.
Recent example also includes Serbian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Vuk Jeremić, whose Bachelor of Science in Theoretical Physics from the prestigious University of Cambridge could not be recognized as equivalent to diploma by the Faculty of Physics, University of Belgrade, and it took Jeremic more than 8 (eight) years to have his diploma finally recognized in September 2005.