A calibrated sensing system is provided in accordance with the teachings of this invention for sensing charge in a storage medium, such as a storage capacitor, coupled to an access or bit/sense line which compensates for most sources of variability in the storage medium and in the access line. In the system, the unknown charge stored in the storage medium is transferred to a first capacitor or potential well via the access line. A high charge state of the storage medium is written into the storage medium and known fractional packets of charge are prepared therefrom, transferred selectively to a second capacitor or potential well and compared with the unknown charge in the first potential to determine the relative level of the unknown charge that was stored in the storage medium. By selectively using two or more fractional packets of charge multilevel sensing is performed.