"A" is for Absurd

College Life
41

<p>AlwaysInAwe, grad schools really don’t care if you were the best student in all of your classes. They care about your potential to become a successful researcher. Letters of recommendation are important for grad school - in fact, they are probably the single most important part of a graduate application! Consider the following two blubs:</p>

<p>“Student ABC has done very well in my graph theory class. She got the highest score on the final exam. She has demonstrated a good command of the material on the homework assignment, where she always opted for the harder ‘challenge problems’. She works very diligently and I expect her to be successful in your graduate program.” </p>

<p>"Student XYZ finished my graph theory class with a B+. Half-way through the semester he disappeared for three straight weeks, only to reappear with a new algorithm to solve ___. I was so impressed by his insight and creativity that I offered him a job in my research lab. He is the most promising student I have taught in a decade and expect him to mature into a top notch researcher. "</p>

<p>Guess which student will get into the top graduate programs? </p>

<p>The thing to keep in mind about grad schools and letters of recommendation is that academia is a very small world. If you stay in the same or a closely related speciality, there’s a good chance that the people reading your application will know your references - if not personally, at least by name. Professors who write overly inflated letters for all of their students quickly lose their credibility.</p>

42

<p>In most of my classes only the top 1-5% of students end up with an A, so they already do show who’s at the top. I’ve had classes where only 1 student got an A. I’ve had classes where the top grade on a test was not even a passing grade, or where the highest grade anyone got was a C. So I really don’t see what this problem is coming from. I’ve worked hard for my 3.6, and I’m getting tired of people saying that it’s less of an achievement than it actually was because grade inflation is rampant, when clearly it is close to non-existent in the classes I’m taking.</p>

<p>There also already is an A+ grade, although it doesn’t actually increase GPA at all. I got one in a senior-level probability class last semester, and in one of my lab classes.</p>

43

<p>I think that at a certain level the predictability of admissions breaks down. If you have 100 people applying for 20 spots, but all 100 have truly amazing grades and scores, it doesn’t matter if one of them is half a percent better; the admissions officers are just going to take the most interesting people and the people with the most promise to succeed in that field.</p>

44

<p>

At the undergraduate level, maybe. At the graduate level, I am fairly confident that admission decisions would be quite predictable if applicants had full knowledge of their file. I am saying that because I was just applying to PhD programs and I met basically the same group of students at the open houses of several top programs (MIT, Princeton, Stanford…).</p>

45

<p>I think you have to remember if you rescaled the grades such that less students got A it would just mean that a B grade was much more impressive than it is now. The same numbers of jobs and grad school places would be available and the same number of students would take them up. It would just mean that the people allocating these places would have more information available.</p>

<p>@berilium You’re not quite right about grad school applications. Having been in grad school a good few years I often have to listen to my supervisor talking/complaining about the difficulty of selecting applicants and the problem of grade inflation. Yes you have letters of recommendation to go on and these are very important but the cases you’re referring to where a candidate doesn’t do well in a class but yet does exceptionally well outside of it are extremely rare.
Most very impressive candidates at least for technical subjects at the very highest level will have done very very well in all of their classes AND done some exceptional work outside of them. A candidate for example for a very mathematical discipline must be performing at the very top level in all of their pertinent classes. This is directly tied to their ability to become a researcher. Academia is in fact NOT a small world when it comes to grad school applications. Any particular research field is a small world but someone for example in theoretical physics at MIT will not have heard of someone doing research in adaptive optics from a university in New Zealand. Students apply from all over the world much more so than occurs for undergrad and the letters of recommendations will most often come from professor or even institutions that you are not familiar with. Not all students from all universities have very close contact with their professors so a reliable letter of recommendation is impossible for some. The best way to test all of these very different candidates is by giving accurate information on how they perfom in all pertinent classes. Not just differential geometry. How did they do in General relativity? Group Theory? Quantum field Theory etc</p>

<pre><code>There are also tests like the GRE but if you actually look at what is being tested here it’s just a set of very easy questions that need to be done very quickly. This is not reflective of how research works (solving very hard questions very slowly).
</code></pre>

<p>I also have a friend who selects candidates for high level banking jobs. He says the work they will be required to do is of the level of difficult undergrad problems. However they exclusively higher PHD candidates. Why? Because you cannot tell from their undergrad grades alone how competent they really are so they basically use the graduate degree process as a long winded filtering too.</p>

<p>Having said this all of this applies to a very small proportion of jobs/graduate degrees. For the vast majority of jobs or graduate degrees which aare less theoretical and involve more practical work it doesn’t matter if you’re top 5% or top 40%, and there will be many many other skills required that aren’t represented by your GPA and often can’t be tested until you actually start doing whatever it is.</p>

46

<p>I think in this day and age an “A” begins to mean less than it used to in the sense that if you get an “A” you should actually be very, very happy you got one because it is not (it should not) be that easy to get one. As grade inflation occurs the grades themselves begin to lose meaning. Nevertheless, I don’t agree with people using the term “giving out grades”. You don’t give out grades, you earn them. No one is entitled to an “A”, you have to work your butt off, understand the concepts in class, and have a little bit of luck.</p>

47

<p>One can take easier classes and still get A’s for career purposes. The sad thing is that some institutions encourage this by setting somewhat high GPA requirements (3.5 for example) for internships/jobs. Yet, someone who takes a trickier class (math, languages, etc. come to mind) and gets a GPA literally a few decimal points lower is in trouble. Those people with the inflated GPA’s are likely not taking unavoidably challenging classes.</p>

48

<p>

Why would they hire researchers to perform tasks that someone with an undergraduate degree could do and for less money? Maybe I’m wrong, but that seems very strange.</p>

<p>

Office hours? I suppose if there are no office hours (also a bit strange, at least in the US—I can’t speak for the world) then one would have that problem.</p>

49

<p>I have a different take on this…</p>

<p>One reason grade inflation has happened is that employers aren’t willing to distinguish between two candidates with the same gpa from two different colleges. Folks who argue that there should be a sort of bell curve in gpa distribution tend to think that the curve should be the same at all colleges.</p>

<p>If that were the case, then the kid with a 2.0 gpa would be exactly in the middle of the class at Harvard or Northeast Podunk State College. When an employer advertises a job and requires a minimum of a 3.0, the same percentage of grads of Northeast Podunk and of Harvard will fail to qualify. </p>

<p>That’s one of the reasons private colleges accelerated grade inflation. Back in the old days, the then Boalt School of Law at the U of Berkeley adjusted your gpa based on the college you attended. This info came out in response to a state FOIA request and California law makers went BESERK. </p>

<p>So, since private colleges knew that gpa’s from their schools would no longer be adjusted, they made the adjustment themselves. </p>

<p>I think the fairest system is the one Dartmouth has. You get a grade. When you apply to grad or professional school or a job, you can be asked for a transcript. The transcript shows not only your grade in each class, but the distribution of grades. So, if you got an A and half the class did, the employer can see that. If you got a B+ and out of 40 students in the class only two got higher grades, the employer can see that too. The transcript gives some context–and I think ALL colleges should do this. </p>

<p>That’s what law schools do in a way. When you apply to most ABA accredited law schools, you submit your transcript to a central clearing place. Your gpa is recalculated so everyone is on one scale. The GPAs and median LSATs of all other applicants from your college are also calculated. When you apply, this info is sent to each law school–even though your own college doesn’t calculate it. To some extent, law schools can figure out grade inflation by COMPARING the distribution of grades and LSATs at each. So, if the median GPA of law school applicants from Harvard is a 3.58 and the median LSAT is 166–that really is usually the median Harvard College LSAT-- and the median GPA at Northeast Podunk is a 3.1 but the median LSAT is a 149, the applicants from Harvard College aren’t going to get killed. </p>

<p>But if there really is a college that fights grade inflation–and there are such colleges–and the median GPA is a 3.2 while the median LSAT is a 163, then that can be taken into account, if the law school so chooses. </p>

<p>It’s not just medians either. The law schools will be told that a 3.8 at “fighting grade inflation LAC” puts you in the top 10% of your class whereas a 3.8 at “grade inflated LAC” doesn’t put you in the top quarter OF LAW SCHOOL APPLICANTS FROM THAT COLLEGE. </p>

<p>I think that if it became standard procedure for all colleges to provide context for grades a la Dartmouth, the pressure on profs to inflate grades would be greatly eased. It’s still not a cure all, because obviously there are tough, higher level courses which are only going to be taken by people who excel in that field and there are introductory required courses where the percentage of students who are actually good in the subject may be less than half. You wouldn’t expect the same grade distribution. </p>

<p>Still, I think requiring context would help a lot.</p>

50

<p>Does the 43% include community colleges?</p>

51

<p>Well, that just spits on all my efforts to learn and master the material. I guess I’ll just lay low and let the "A"s come to me- just kidding, you have to work to get an “A”. You do. I know that every generation likes to talk about how the current one doesn’t work as hard as they did, but every student works to get an “A”. Just because I don’t stay up at all hours to get my “A” doesn’t mean I’m not working hard- I’m just more efficient in my studies. It just seems like a generation-ist theory to me.</p>

52

<p>If a student earns a 93% in a class they should not be forced to receive a “B” just because
X% of students earned greater than 93%.</p>

<p>“A” represents mastery of the material. If a student receives 90% or greater in a class, it is safe to say they mastered the material.</p>

<p>Just because some students mastered the material with a 99%, other students in the class should not be penalized just because they received 90%.</p>

<p>Grades should be based on your comprehension, not on the other students. Unless of course no one receives an “A” then grades should be put on a bell curve.</p>

<p>And I do not understand why some people say an A should be hard to get. If you master the material, you mastered it. There should be no hard to get.</p>

53

<p>What about using numbers instead of letters? e.g. on one’s transcript it would say you got, say, a 93% or a 99% in the class.</p>

54

<p>That would work except in classes where no on received above 90%. In that case grades should be put on a bell-curve. Which would work for students on the and above the curve, but the students who just missed the curve, how would you calculate there new percentage? Would you subtract points from there current percent?</p>

55

<p>

</p>

<p>I got a 70% in Math. Did I just barely pass or was I in the top decile of the class? </p>

<p>

</p>

<p>I didn’t know anyone did that. Do you have a link with more information? I googled “Dartmouth transcript grade distribution” and came up with a bunch of just and this thread.</p>

<p>Personally, I think there was a class where the average is 90%+ then that instructor is not doing a good job of challenging the top students.</p>

56

<p>The professor’s job is to teach the material,(s)he should not be challenging the students. If the student wants a challenge they should take a higher level course, do their own in-depth research/thesis, or ask for a side project from the professor.</p>

<p>The professor is there to teach the material, if everyone masters it, I do not think that makes the professor bad. </p>

<p>^^ My opinion</p>