24 ms·

Why do those students even need to cheat? Harvard has a 97% graduation rate and Stanford 93%.

• zepto 9y ago
  How do you think they got that?
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
• objclxt 9y ago
  I used to Head TA CS at Harvard (or "TF", to use their verbiage), so can answer this: the graduation rate is very high, but honors are capped (mainly because the honors rate was at one time out of control). Personally I never really cared for honors, but for many people it can be extremely important. Because honors are capped at a fixed percentage of the class relative to GPA this means it's vital to maximize your grades, hence the cheating. No joke - I used to get many e-mails from students after grades were released begging for us to bump them up.
  • nebabyte 9y ago
    Why not turn that to your advantage? Institute a policy wherein they are bumped down if they send an email and their reason for doing so does not fall within pregiven requirements (e.g. clerical error in recording a grade). An excellent prof at the non-Ivy I went to did this, and it was quite effective. Some small percent of your grade (significant enough to bump you if needed) was guaranteed unless you chose to try and create noise to get moved up.
    • UK-AL 9y ago
      I think this creates a massive disincentive in order to ask why they didn't get the mark they want. For fear of being marked as a complainer. At the end of the day you are there provide guidance to get their skills and knowledge to place they want to be. Not to simply filter wheat from chaff.
• 0xfeba 9y ago
  I gather those statistics only count for "confirmed majors". At my school this meant your first 2 years or so you were "unconfirmed" until you passed certain threshold courses. Namely Calculus 1, and advanced programming courses. This allows them to inflate their graduation rates by weeding out people in disproportionately difficult courses.