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My experience was that it's relatively easy to stack rank Harvard undergraduates, but it often doesn't feel like it serves any educational purpose to do so. In

My experience was that it's relatively easy to stack rank Harvard undergraduates, but it often doesn't feel like it serves any educational purpose to do so. In the class I taught of 12, there were 10 that seemed like they deserved an A or A-. They completed all the assignments and did their absolute best as far as I could tell. Some were definitely better than others (A vs. A-), but giving the hardworking but not genius students Bs just made them stressed out. They would come to office hours to ask how they could improve. The only true answer I could give was "there are 2-3 students in this class that are just incredibly creative and gifted writers, they get the As." Maybe it's the role of a teacher to stack rank students, but it's no fun. I'd much prefer to try to get the best out of each student. The truly top students are going to have no problem distinguishing themselves later in life anyway, it's just so obvious how good they are.

RogerL 13y ago
Ya, that's my difficulty with the article. If all the students learned the material, then what is the problem? OTOH, if they just didn't grasp information, or didn't try, they deserve something other than an A. There is no easy answer, and it varies by course. In an algorithms course you are going to learn trees, sorting, graphs, and complexity analysis. If you master those, why not an A? Sure, you can make the course insanely hard, and force the students to do essentially original research to get an A, but what is the point there, exactly? You end up with a pressure-cooker, swamped with work school just to create a bell curve. I spent so much of my University time on my own research ideas, helping professors, and so on - course work was almost a back drop. I think I got so much more out of it doing it that way. A competitive fight of churning out massive amounts of work against other straight-A's in high school type-A personalities? Not so valuable (IMO). Time to think, dream, and experiment is what is valuable, and how do you put a grade on that? edit: I take this back somewhat. In some fields it definitely pays off to have a broader foundation. I took quite a few math classes, but would have profited by by even more. Lots of research papers are tough going because I don't have all the math. So there is value in volume of work, too.
wnissen 13y ago
Stack ranking in small groups is stupid and counterproductive because it forces a distribution where none necessarily exists. So for any particular class of 12 I agree with you. However, Harvard enrolls over 1500 frosh next year. Is there really so little daylight between them that they should all get an A or A-? Graduation is supposed to ensure the minimum fulfillment of standards, GPA is for ranking. Given that you're seeing kids on the far end of the tail, I would expect more variance, not less. Let's be honest here: grade inflation is not something we do for a reason, but rather something that happens because no one has any particular interest in preventing it. Full disclosure: I attended a demanding college whose 2007 median GPA was 3.35 (the average was less). Of the 150-ish annual graduates, only 7 have ever achieved a 4.0 since its founding in 1955.
- tristanz 13y ago
  The overall GPA can still be used to rank, even at Harvard. The latin honors are fixed at top 5, 20, and 50 percent of graduating classes. I don't really care about grade inflation overall because I don't think more competition for grades would improve Harvard as an educational institution. I do think grading norms/curves may be important to standardize the distribution across majors. It's absolutely the case that some students avoid difficult courses. This is very unfortunate.

RogerL 13y ago

Ya, that's my difficulty with the article. If all the students learned the material, then what is the problem? OTOH, if they just didn't grasp information, or didn't try, they deserve something other than an A. There is no easy answer, and it varies by course. In an algorithms course you are going to learn trees, sorting, graphs, and complexity analysis. If you master those, why not an A? Sure, you can make the course insanely hard, and force the students to do essentially original research to get an A, but what is the point there, exactly? You end up with a pressure-cooker, swamped with work school just to create a bell curve. I spent so much of my University time on my own research ideas, helping professors, and so on - course work was almost a back drop. I think I got so much more out of it doing it that way. A competitive fight of churning out massive amounts of work against other straight-A's in high school type-A personalities? Not so valuable (IMO). Time to think, dream, and experiment is what is valuable, and how do you put a grade on that? edit: I take this back somewhat. In some fields it definitely pays off to have a broader foundation. I took quite a few math classes, but would have profited by by even more. Lots of research papers are tough going because I don't have all the math. So there is value in volume of work, too.

wnissen 13y ago

Stack ranking in small groups is stupid and counterproductive because it forces a distribution where none necessarily exists. So for any particular class of 12 I agree with you. However, Harvard enrolls over 1500 frosh next year. Is there really so little daylight between them that they should all get an A or A-? Graduation is supposed to ensure the minimum fulfillment of standards, GPA is for ranking. Given that you're seeing kids on the far end of the tail, I would expect more variance, not less. Let's be honest here: grade inflation is not something we do for a reason, but rather something that happens because no one has any particular interest in preventing it. Full disclosure: I attended a demanding college whose 2007 median GPA was 3.35 (the average was less). Of the 150-ish annual graduates, only 7 have ever achieved a 4.0 since its founding in 1955.

tristanz 13y ago
The overall GPA can still be used to rank, even at Harvard. The latin honors are fixed at top 5, 20, and 50 percent of graduating classes. I don't really care about grade inflation overall because I don't think more competition for grades would improve Harvard as an educational institution. I do think grading norms/curves may be important to standardize the distribution across majors. It's absolutely the case that some students avoid difficult courses. This is very unfortunate.