For this discussion, an aggressive “weed out” policy would be:
For a college, a GPA to remain in good academic standing that is higher than 2.0 or equivalent (C or lowest passing grade average), or academic dismissal in a time frame shorter than a probationary term after earning a substandard GPA.
For a major where entering students are not directly admitted to the major, a high minimum college GPA or grades in specific courses (or competitive admission process expecting such high GPA or grades) to enter the major.
For a major, for students already in the major, a high minimum college GPA or grades in specific courses to stay in the major.
It highly depends on the plans for specific career. I am not sure about many other fields, but all pre-meds, no matter what is requirement of UG / Merit scholarships / major, are aware that if you let the GPA slip below certain level, than even if you keep your major / Merit awards or whatever, you are derailed from the pre-med track. The good pre-med program will have a killer weed out class in the first semester of the freshman year, so that students do not waste a lot of time / college credits being pre-med. Pre-med does not require any particular major, however, there are certain number of science/math pre-reqs that they have to have. Average “survivor” rate for pre-meds is about 15%, but the 85% of those who did not survive on the pre-med track maybe very successful at whatever they choose for themselves after they realize that they do not have a chance at medical school. I do not know if you would call them “weeded out” or not and if it is considered “aggressive weed out”. These students will not be dismissed though. Overall, many UG’s change their major / career goals for various reasons, some realize that they cannot keep up with the academic level in their original track - got “weeded out”, others simply discover that they like something else.
@MiamiDAP is right about pre-med students having a weed-out class their freshman year. I think it’s usually biology class or section for pre-med majors. Somehow my nephew ended up in this class and got a great, big, giant F. And the bad thing is that he wasn’t pre-med.
Many of the classes which are weed-outs for “pre-meds” also happen to be weed-outs for aspiring natural science majors who aren’t pre-meds.
Two examples at one top 20 college(Tufts) are an older cousin(graduated in the early '80s) and a post-college roommate(graduated in the mid-'90s) ~ 10 years apart who found around 60% of their respective intro chem/bio class were “weeded out” with D or F grades* which meant they couldn’t continue in the major unless they took that very same course over again and passed it with a C or higher. Both of them were part of the ~40% who survived to continue in their respective majors to graduation.
One could have also be ill advised to take it to fulfill one’s science distribution credit though that’s rare as most non-pre-med/non-science majors wouldn’t go for that in the same way most STEM majors IME would avoid taking intermediate/advanced humanities/social science classes requiring heavy reading and writing loads**.
Some courses openly post grades for the entire class in the department billboard area with student ID rather than explicitly identifying the students by name.
** Lost count of how many STEM majors whined about reading 100-300 pages a week or writing a “long” 5-8 page paper…workloads which are standard for most INTRO-level humanities/social science courses at my LAC and most respectable/elite colleges. I can just imagine how they’d react if they took one advanced undergrad seminar class which required an average reading load of 800-1000 pages a week, class participation which assumed you read the vast majority of it at the very least, and writing a 20-30 page in-depth final research paper which must be workshopped with the Prof & classmates in the course during the second-half of the semester…and that’s just one class.
I posted a footnote in anticipation of that question…but will post it again:
From those posted grades, it’s easy to gauge what percentage of students were weeded out of the major along with determining the distribution of each grade from A to F.
However, the level of weeding differs. While a 3.0 GPA student is extremely unlikely to get into a US MD medical school, a 3.0 GPA student is likely to be able to enter and stay in natural science majors at most colleges and universities that offer those majors.
Thanks, @cobrat. I missed that. My eldest just finished his first semester and, as far as I know, grades were only posted online. I didn’t realize some college posted them on bulletin boards. I’ll have to see if his did. I think it’s actually an interesting idea. It can be helpful to know where you stand compared to classmates.
However, it can be quite a sobering experience to find out you’re one of the minority in your intro natural science class who did well enough to even continue in the major.
Not the topic of this thread, but: Really?!? All three institutions I’ve taught at, I’ve been very clearly told that doing this is a FERPA violation. Not that every professor cares about FERPA, of course, but the financial risk is real…
The grades won’t be posted by name, so I don’t think it’s a FERPA violation. At least one of my kids’ high school teachers also did this. It’s helpful when you can see that your 59 or whatever curved grade you got sits on the bellcurve. I haven’t seen billboards like this in years now that it’s so much easier to post things on the internet.
I remember instructors posting grades by student ID number in the pre-web (but post-FERPA) days.
However, it was more labor intensive to reverse-engineer someone’s grades out of such postings back then than it is today with more computing capability available now.
My university’s interpretation of FERPA prohibits posting grades by student number (obviously, posting by name is also out). However, posting by student number was done at the university I attended a long time ago.
Most of the engineering majors at my university require a relatively high GPA (often above 3.0) for admission to the major at the end of the sophomore year, with specific requirements for the courses that must have been completed. The rationale for this is that the number of engineering faculty members is limited, and for accreditation purposes, the faculty:student ratio has to be kept at or above a certain level. Then, there is more demand for the major than there is room in it. I don’t think we are the only university like this.
The intro science and math courses are not designed as “weed out” courses, though. They cover the topics that students need to understand, in order to build on them for subsequent courses, in order to reach the level expected of a science/math student with an undergraduate degree in the field, by the time of graduation. If the number of students who actually fail a course goes much above 5%, the Dean becomes pretty agitated, though.
One of my colleagues asks other faculty fairly often, “Do you see yourself as a weeder, or as a gardener?”
My D’s school does this with Chem 105 (first semester chem class). I didn’t realize this until hearing the horror stories from other parents - unconfirmed rumor was 60% Ds and Fs. Never been so happy about an AP score that allowed her to skip it.
At UW in Seattle, students apply into their majors after junior year, so two full years of high-stakes coursework. For engineering and CS, only about a third are accepted and there are GPA requirements just to apply. I doubt S1 would have gone unless he received direct entry.
@dfbdfb When I was in law school, my recollection is that we were given exam numbers for a single grading period. So grades could be posted without anyone having any way to know who it was.
In reality, you could look at second year grades and if a single exam number had trouble in a number of classes you often could hazard a guess as to who it was. Sometimes people might tell someone their grade for a class, and you could narrow it down. But I don’t remember doing this, other than to note a couple of times that someone had seemed to crash and burn.
At some schools (including my alma mater) the registrar publishes grade distributions by course and by section. As 5 percent, Bs 30 percent, Cs 50 percent and so forth. It allows students to see which instructors are tougher than others. I don’t recall if the number of students who dropped or withdrew was included. They are still publishing them last I looked (a year or so ago). It saved me from a weed out course or two back when they were in big paper books. Now they are online.
And at the risk of another ancient story to annoy everyone - our grades were posted by social security number back in the late 80s and early 90s.
“My D’s school does this with Chem 105 (first semester chem class). I didn’t realize this until hearing the horror stories from other parents - unconfirmed rumor was 60% Ds and Fs. Never been so happy about an AP score that allowed her to skip it.”
Yes, these weed out classes include good number of students who are not pre-meds. Also, many are advised NOT to skip it despite of 5 on AP exam. Yes, your AP credit will count. But it is not the end of story at all. D. listened, and she did not skip her first Bio class. The class went thru AP Bio material in the first 2 weeks and then they moved on. It was a foundation for the next Bio classes. It was taught by 3 profs being at every lecture, each teaching his sub-specialty of this class. Lab reports were basis for the horror stories lingering in the Honors dorm. I heard them students who never took this class. Many did not survive, good number of pre-meds were derailed from their track and good number of non-pre-meds changed their major to something completely un-relelated, like business. My own D. was shocked but realized that she simply had to adjust her efforts up if she wanted to have an A. I am talking about first Bio class in the first semester of the freshman year at in-state public college with majority of class being HS valedictorians. I am not talking about any Ivy / Elite school.