<p>I was just reading an old blog and it mentioned how intro classes (girs) are usually graded on a curve, but I remember reading something about curves being really rare, almost non existent at MIT because they create too much competition....so, in intro classes specifically, are there still curves?</p>
<p>There really isn’t what I would call a “curve” in any way, and there definitely isn’t a curve in that 2.1% of the class gets an A, 13.6% gets a B, etc. Most GIRs don’t have preset cut-offs to get certain grades - rather, grade boundaries are determined after exams based on an analysis of overall class performance. I believe there is some rule somewhere about how grade manipulation can’t hurt the students, though I could be wrong.</p>
<p>But, at least for GIRs (which are all I’ve taken), I definitely did NOT feel like I was competing with my classmates.</p>
<p>Many tests at MIT are curved, but not in a way that creates competition or is problematic for students.</p>
<p>The most common way for tests to be curved at MIT is for the class average score to be set at a B, and for the A and C thresholds to be set based on a given distance from class average. This enables tests to be written that can really distinguish between different levels of student ability – unlike high school tests with which you might be familiar, where class average might be a 90 or 95, with very little variation in student scores, MIT tests are written so that class average might be a 65 or 70, with wide variation in student scores.</p>
<p>The only type of curves that (in my opinion) lead to student competition are those that are written to be too easy, and which either have an extremely high average (90-95%) or which have the maximum score for the test set by the highest scorer. Neither of these situations ever happened to me at MIT – on the very few occasions where I took a test with a 90-95% average, the test was straight-scaled.</p>
<p>Are there grades like A-, B+ etc at MIT or are they strictly As and Bs.</p>
<p>All +/- modifiers are internal and are dropped on your external transcript. Which makes the A- I got in my grad class basically the best grade ever.</p>
<p>A- is the most satisfying grade you can get, all the benefits of an A with the least effort possible. On the other hand, B+ is the worst grade, so close to an A, and you could have otherwise done a lot less work and gotten a B-</p>
<p>How does it work for GPA? A- is treated as 4 (5 at MIT?) and B+ is treated as 3?</p>
<p>^ Yes, this is correct. So, if you get A- / A / B+ / B-, your semester GPA would be a 4.5</p>