A method and apparatus of determining an encoding rate associated with a received signal (12), where the method including the steps of demodulating in a demodulator (80) to produce a series of metrics (22) representing energies of a series of data symbols carried by received signal (12); decoding in a decoder (20) series of metrics (22) to produce a set of total metrics (TM) (90) corresponding to a set of possible encoding rates; normalizing in a TM normalizer (28) set of TM (90) to produce a corresponding set of normalized TM (23); and determining the encoding rate in a rate determination (24) based on set of normalized TM (23). The normalizing step in TM normalizer (28) includes multiplying a set of effective finger counts (19) by a constant (410) to generate a corresponding set of numbers (420); and subtracting numbers (420) from associating TM (90) to produce normalized TM (23).