--- title: The Grade: A New Dating App Grades Profiles and Expels Failing Users description: Users who score an "F" on The Grade get banned canonical: https://time.com/3590970/online-dating-app-the-grade-fails-users/ author: Nolan Feeney article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-11-18T02:04:22.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T08:56:17.889Z og:title: A New Dating App Grades Profiles and Expels Failing Users og:description: Users who score an "F" on The Grade get banned og:url: https://time.com/3590970/online-dating-app-the-grade-fails-users/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: A New Dating App Grades Profiles and Expels Failing Users twitter:description: Users who score an "F" on The Grade get banned twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # A New Dating App Grades Profiles and Expels Failing Users > Sponsored content. 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Worth Your Time is TIME's culture newsletter, published Tuesdays and Saturdays to 40,000 subscribers as of August 2026. #### Who writes TIME's culture recommendations? Culture editor Eliza Berman writes Worth Your Time, drawing on TIME's critics and culture desk. #### Is Worth Your Time free? Yes. It is a free newsletter available at time.com/newsletters.  by [Nolan Feeney](https://time.com/author/nolan-feeney/)  ## Nolan Feeney Nov 18, 2014 2:04 AM UTC  by [Nolan Feeney](https://time.com/author/nolan-feeney/)  ## Nolan Feeney Nov 18, 2014 2:04 AM UTC To meet your prince in online dating, you have to kiss a lot of frogs —[ unless one app gets its way](http://www.thegradedating.com/). As its name suggests, The Grade algorithmically assigns a letter grades to users based on their popularity (how often their profiles are liked), the quality of their messages (considering at grammar and tastefulness) and how responsive they are. Those who get an F grade are expelled, and any user who falls below a C grade receives tips on how to stop being such a terrible suitor. The Grade purports to be the first app of its kind to ban users who don’t cut it in the classroom of singledom. The appmakers say the concept was shaped by “substantial market research” that revealed women who used dating apps were “unhappy with the quality of low-quality daters and the frequency of inappropriate, hostile and sexually suggestive messages.” Instead of “substantial market research,” the appmakers could also have just asked any woman who tried online dating, ever. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3590970/online-dating-app-the-grade-fails-users/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3590970/online-dating-app-the-grade-fails-users/"},"headline":"A New Dating App Grades Profiles and Expels Failing Users","datePublished":"2014-11-18T02:04:22.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T08:56:17.889Z","description":"Users who score an \"F\" on The Grade get banned","url":"https://time.com/3590970/online-dating-app-the-grade-fails-users/","keywords":["Living","Dating","apps","online dating"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Nolan Feeney","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/nolan-feeney/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-living/","name":"Living"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3590970/online-dating-app-the-grade-fails-users/","name":"A New Dating App Grades Profiles and Expels Failing Users"}}]}] ```