How to read your VA rating decision
Most veterans read the first page, the percentage, the monthly amount, and stop. The document that decided your claim is ten or thirty pages long, and the parts nobody reads are where the mistakes hide.
A rating decision is a legal document written by a rater working through a checklist, not a letter written to explain itself to you. It has a predictable structure, and once you know the structure, it stops being a wall of text and starts being a list of things to verify.
The structure of the document
| Section | What it contains | Why you read it |
|---|---|---|
| Introduction | What was claimed, the effective date of the claim itself | Confirms every condition you filed made it in |
| Code sheet | Each condition, its diagnostic code, percentage, and effective date | The numbers that set your pay, and the ones most often wrong |
| Reasons for decision | The rater's explanation for each granted or denied condition | Tells you exactly what evidence was found lacking |
| Evidence list | Every document the rater considered | Reveals what was not considered |
| Combined evaluation | How the individual ratings combine | Checkable arithmetic. See below |
| Notice of rights | The appeal deadline and your options | The one-year clock starts on this date |
Five things to check, in order
1. Every claimed condition, accounted for
Cross-reference the code sheet against what you actually filed. Conditions occasionally fall out, merged into another rating, decided in a separate letter, or simply missed. If something you claimed is not addressed anywhere, that is not a denial to appeal; it is a claim that was never adjudicated, and it needs to be raised directly.
2. The reasons for denial or a low rating. Read them as instructions
This section is the most valuable part of the document and the least read. For every condition, it states specifically why the rater decided as they did. Common language and what it is actually telling you:
| What the decision says | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| "No evidence of a nexus" | The medical link is missing | Get an opinion, file a supplemental claim |
| "No current diagnosis of record" | Nothing shows you have the condition now | Get evaluated, then file supplemental |
| "STRs do not show treatment for this condition" | The in-service event is not documented | Lay statements, personnel records, buddy statements can fill this |
| "Examination did not show criteria met for the next higher evaluation" | The exam findings did not reach the next rating level | Compare the numbers in the exam to the criteria yourself. See below |
| "Continued at the current evaluation" | An increase request was reviewed and denied | Check whether the exam captured a bad day or only a good one |
Every one of these is a specific, addressable gap, which is exactly the information a supplemental claim needs to succeed. Denial language is not a wall. It is a description of the one thing to go get.
3. The exam findings, against the actual criteria
If a condition was rated below what you expected, pull the rating criteria for that diagnostic code, the condition library or 38 CFR Part 4 directly, and compare the exam's actual measurements against the threshold for the next level. A back condition rated 20% needs forward flexion between 30° and 60°; if the exam recorded 32°, you are two degrees from a materially different outcome, and that is worth scrutinizing rather than accepting.
Also check whether the exam addressed flare-ups and functional loss due to pain, which regulation requires be considered separately from the raw range-of-motion number. An exam report that skips this section is a concrete defect, not a matter of opinion.
4. The effective dates, line by line, not just the top one
Every condition has its own effective date on the code sheet, and they are not always the same. Check each one against when you actually filed, and against your Intent to File date if you had one. An effective date that is later than it should be is a quiet, compounding loss. It is worth the five minutes to verify.
5. What is silently absent
The things nobody puts in front of you, that you have to go look for yourself:
- Special Monthly Compensation. If you have a single 100% rating with additional conditions combining to 60% or more, or a service-connected condition associated with loss of use, SMC may apply and may not have been addressed. See the SMC guide.
- Permanent and Total status. A 100% rating is not automatically marked P&T. If your condition is static and unlikely to improve, and the decision schedules a future exam anyway, that is worth raising.
- Dependents. At 30% or above, dependents increase your monthly rate, but only if VA has them on file. Check that your dependency claim (VA Form 21-686c) was processed alongside the rating.
- TDIU consideration. If the evidence in your file suggests you cannot work, the VA is supposed to consider TDIU on its own even if you did not check the box. It is regularly missed. See the TDIU guide.
The combined percentage is not a judgment call, it follows a fixed formula. Verify it yourself against the combined rating math, including the bilateral factor if you have paired-limb conditions. Arithmetic errors are rare but they happen, and they are one of the cleanest things to fix through a Higher-Level Review.
Building your response from what you find
Once you know exactly what is missing or wrong, the next step follows almost automatically:
- Missing evidence you can now supply → Supplemental Claim.
- The existing record was misread or miscalculated → Higher-Level Review.
- A condition has since worsened → a new claim for increase, not an appeal.
- An unclaimed secondary appeared in the reasoning → a new claim for that condition, guided by the secondary conditions patterns.
- SMC or dependents were missed → raise them directly; often correctable without a formal appeal at all.
Whatever you choose, you generally have one year from the decision date to act and keep your effective date. Put that date on a calendar before you do anything else.
An accredited VSO can review a decision letter with you at no cost and often catches things a first read misses, a missed SMC entitlement, an exam that did not address flare-ups, an arithmetic slip. Find one through VA.gov before you file anything.
READY214's condition library lays out the exact rating criteria for common conditions and the combined rating calculator checks the arithmetic, so you can verify your own decision line by line. Free, no account needed.