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This piece reminded me of an earlier NYT piece, where the author suggested that students drop out of STEM because of the low grades they receive compared to sim
by nickff 13y ago
This piece reminded me of an earlier NYT piece, where the author suggested that students drop out of STEM because of the low grades they receive compared to similar peers in other faculties.[1] It is somewhat strange that students in different fields are compared through the lens of a grading system which does not reflect the subject matter differences, or the grade inflation which has affected each field differently.
[1] http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/why-students-leave-the-engineering-track/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0 http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/why-students-le...
- Balgair 13y agoThank you for the NYT article link. It is a fact that grade inflation occurs in the humanities at many school. Earlier posters state that Harvard Biz. School only give 5% of the class a C. My brother incurred this problem when applying for grad school in the medical field. He was a physics major, arguably one of the hardest majors on most campuses, and got a proud 3.0 based on a strict bell curve. Top 15% of the class is pretty nice. However, in the bio field, with GPA inflating a C to a B, this made him seem totally average. Many schools just rejected him outright based on this (he thinks) What to do? A standard has to be set, and as been. But professors can do as they please. Inflating grades has all the wrong incentives, which is why it happens. Schools give high GPA, kids give alumni dollars back with better jobs, repeat. However, now you can't compare the kids as the metric is borked. garbage in = garbage out.