6 ms·

Have school grades ever deflated? Or undergone some sort of correction? No citation needed, anecdotes are fine.

oconnor663 8y ago
My grades underwent a correction or two back in the day :)
hashkb 8y ago
Yes. At my school we had a real curve. If we all got perfect scores, that's a C for everyone. (More often we all got 15s and they became C's). Teachers who gave too many A's would be benched. We laughed at Ivy League 4.0s which just require a phone call from a parent.
- drewg123 8y ago
  MIT? My wife went there, and while most STEM grad schools understood that grades at MIT were not inflated, medical schools did not seem to care. One of her friends had to first get inflated grades doing a STEM masters degree before she could get into med school due to her uninflated MIT undergrad grades.
  - hashkb 8y ago
    GT. I heard you all got to play with kittens freshman year. In response, GT professors replaced 20% more lectures with exams.
    - lordCarbonFiber 8y ago
      Almost no one at GT does true curves anymore. Just like stack ranking, trying to implement true curves with a non random distribution is a fool's errand and poor knowledge of statistics.
    - mrexroad 8y ago
      To hell with Georgia!
- joshvm 8y ago
  This is standard practice at a lot of universities. At my university results were scaled based on the class performance in that exam and the performance of everyone in other exams. So if you're all 4.0 students, but the exam is horrendous and everyone only gets 20%, you'll probably end up with a good grade still. I studied physics. It was possible to game the system to a certain extent. If you took the (subjectively) hardest modules like gauge theory, you could get a high grade even if you only answered half the paper. So if you were smart, but not top of your class, you'd be better off taking the hard subjects because every mark you got was effectively worth more. If you took the easy and popular modules, every mark would count and it might even be normalised down.
  - workinfunk 8y ago
    Of course this only works until everyone becomes wise to it. Then you're worse off where you started.
    - joshvm 8y ago
      That's true, but unlikely. These are not particularly large or popular courses (15/70 people was common). It's not a tactic that would work for everyone, but it would potentially useful if you're a good student, but at a borderline grade. The reason I liked it was because I hated having to cram for easy subjects because the class average would be so high. I would rather put the same amount of effort in to learn concepts (and have to remember less in the exam) than rote facts.
rxhernandez 8y ago
One of the Cal Polys has an engineering program which curves the average grade to a C+ which automatically disqualifies the average from many engineering jobs.
- cobookman 8y ago
  That's similar to Georgia Tech. Undergrad Eng courses are curved to a C+. With the average GPA being a bit below a 3.0. We used to joke at all the pre med students as to why they chose Georgia Tech as just about every other school had gpa inflation. And grad schools don't take Tech's lower grades into account.
  - hashkb 8y ago
    Which was totally fair given how the HOPE scholarship works. Not that I am bitter.
    - amdsn 8y ago
      Except now STEM courses are weighted as of 2017 in all GA university system schools: Effective fall 2017, when calculating the HOPE and Zell Miller Scholarship postsecondary Grade Point Average (GPA), an additional weight of 0.5 will be added to grades of B, C, and D for approved degree level science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) courses I think it's good since it doesn't affect their Institute GPA but can help them keep the scholarship. I knew a lot of people who lost HOPE/Zell and the increased financial burden made keeping their grades up that much harder.
      - hashkb 8y ago
        That's still stupid. The freshman writing courses at GT are harder than graduate CS at UGA or Valdosta. Edit: Valdosta doesn't offer graduate CS. But imagine that it did.
- a_c_s 8y ago
  A curve distorts grades: they tell you how the person performed relative to their peers not relative to their mastery of the material.
discreditable 8y ago
At the high school I worked at some years ago we pushed the margins for letter grades up a little. For example, where a C used to be 70-80% it became 72-82%, up to A which is 93-100%. Whether or not that affected the overall GPA distribution I could not say.
- 394549 8y ago
  > For example, where a C used to be 70-80% it became 72-82%, up to A which is 93-100% That sounds something like an older system. I don't remember it entirely, but IIRC, very early in my school career, an A was 93-100% and an F was anything less than 70%.
camelCaseOfBeer 8y ago
Historically, I have no idea. Anecdotally, having recently graduated from a liberal arts school(BA CS & Math) I can say the trend seemed to differ wildly depending on the instructor and course. The CS and Stats professors had radically different expectations of what an, "A" performance in their classes was verses general professors. The tears of those students who had only ever gotten A's when they got a B- in Algorithms or Stat465... So much angst and hate over what should reflect an adequate grasp of the material. That said I feel like it's the responsibility of the institution to instill consistent criteria for evaluating performance. Having applied and been accepted to graduate school, I was nearly rejected for having earned C's in two of the hardest courses offered by the school. Turns out the same (tough) professors didn't care about that fact, admitting those of higher GPA's from easier majors no-questions-asked, subjecting me to the microscope. So their distress was qualified in the end. I ended up saying, "f this noise" and took a great job where I get paid to write HN comments on the toilet, btw. Hey, you asked for anecdotes.

My grades underwent a correction or two back in the day :)

Yes. At my school we had a real curve. If we all got perfect scores, that's a C for everyone. (More often we all got 15s and they became C's). Teachers who gave too many A's would be benched. We laughed at Ivy League 4.0s which just require a phone call from a parent.

drewg123 8y ago
MIT? My wife went there, and while most STEM grad schools understood that grades at MIT were not inflated, medical schools did not seem to care. One of her friends had to first get inflated grades doing a STEM masters degree before she could get into med school due to her uninflated MIT undergrad grades.
- hashkb 8y ago
  GT. I heard you all got to play with kittens freshman year. In response, GT professors replaced 20% more lectures with exams.
  - lordCarbonFiber 8y ago
    Almost no one at GT does true curves anymore. Just like stack ranking, trying to implement true curves with a non random distribution is a fool's errand and poor knowledge of statistics.
  - mrexroad 8y ago
    To hell with Georgia!
joshvm 8y ago
This is standard practice at a lot of universities. At my university results were scaled based on the class performance in that exam and the performance of everyone in other exams. So if you're all 4.0 students, but the exam is horrendous and everyone only gets 20%, you'll probably end up with a good grade still. I studied physics. It was possible to game the system to a certain extent. If you took the (subjectively) hardest modules like gauge theory, you could get a high grade even if you only answered half the paper. So if you were smart, but not top of your class, you'd be better off taking the hard subjects because every mark you got was effectively worth more. If you took the easy and popular modules, every mark would count and it might even be normalised down.
- workinfunk 8y ago
  Of course this only works until everyone becomes wise to it. Then you're worse off where you started.
  - joshvm 8y ago
    That's true, but unlikely. These are not particularly large or popular courses (15/70 people was common). It's not a tactic that would work for everyone, but it would potentially useful if you're a good student, but at a borderline grade. The reason I liked it was because I hated having to cram for easy subjects because the class average would be so high. I would rather put the same amount of effort in to learn concepts (and have to remember less in the exam) than rote facts.

rxhernandez 8y ago

One of the Cal Polys has an engineering program which curves the average grade to a C+ which automatically disqualifies the average from many engineering jobs.

cobookman 8y ago
That's similar to Georgia Tech. Undergrad Eng courses are curved to a C+. With the average GPA being a bit below a 3.0. We used to joke at all the pre med students as to why they chose Georgia Tech as just about every other school had gpa inflation. And grad schools don't take Tech's lower grades into account.
- hashkb 8y ago
  Which was totally fair given how the HOPE scholarship works. Not that I am bitter.
  - amdsn 8y ago
    Except now STEM courses are weighted as of 2017 in all GA university system schools: Effective fall 2017, when calculating the HOPE and Zell Miller Scholarship postsecondary Grade Point Average (GPA), an additional weight of 0.5 will be added to grades of B, C, and D for approved degree level science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) courses I think it's good since it doesn't affect their Institute GPA but can help them keep the scholarship. I knew a lot of people who lost HOPE/Zell and the increased financial burden made keeping their grades up that much harder.
    - hashkb 8y ago
      That's still stupid. The freshman writing courses at GT are harder than graduate CS at UGA or Valdosta. Edit: Valdosta doesn't offer graduate CS. But imagine that it did.
a_c_s 8y ago
A curve distorts grades: they tell you how the person performed relative to their peers not relative to their mastery of the material.

discreditable 8y ago

At the high school I worked at some years ago we pushed the margins for letter grades up a little. For example, where a C used to be 70-80% it became 72-82%, up to A which is 93-100%. Whether or not that affected the overall GPA distribution I could not say.

394549 8y ago
> For example, where a C used to be 70-80% it became 72-82%, up to A which is 93-100% That sounds something like an older system. I don't remember it entirely, but IIRC, very early in my school career, an A was 93-100% and an F was anything less than 70%.

camelCaseOfBeer 8y ago

Historically, I have no idea. Anecdotally, having recently graduated from a liberal arts school(BA CS & Math) I can say the trend seemed to differ wildly depending on the instructor and course. The CS and Stats professors had radically different expectations of what an, "A" performance in their classes was verses general professors. The tears of those students who had only ever gotten A's when they got a B- in Algorithms or Stat465... So much angst and hate over what should reflect an adequate grasp of the material. That said I feel like it's the responsibility of the institution to instill consistent criteria for evaluating performance. Having applied and been accepted to graduate school, I was nearly rejected for having earned C's in two of the hardest courses offered by the school. Turns out the same (tough) professors didn't care about that fact, admitting those of higher GPA's from easier majors no-questions-asked, subjecting me to the microscope. So their distress was qualified in the end. I ended up saying, "f this noise" and took a great job where I get paid to write HN comments on the toilet, btw. Hey, you asked for anecdotes.